- Source: Marius Ostrowski
Marius Sebastian Ostrowski FRHistS FRSA (German: [ˈmaːʁɪʊs zɛˈbastɪan ɔsˈtʁɔvskiː]; born 12 December 1988) is a German-British political and social theorist, historian of ideas, policy researcher, and composer, based at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. His research interests lie in the study of ideology and ideologies, focusing especially on how social contexts shape patterns of ordinary thinking and everyday behaviour. He also writes on the theory and history of social democracy, in particular its origins in interwar socialist reformist thought, and on progressive visions of European integration, including the prospects for a Europe-wide Universal Basic Income.
Early life
Ostrowski was born in Frankfurt am Main, West Germany, to parents from Sighișoara and Poznań. His mother was the Romanian-German-British actress Doris Hermann-Ostrowski, née Rodica-Doris Bogdan (1952–2023), who later became a lecturer and tutor in German language studies at the Goethe Institut, London School of Economics, and University of Oxford. After living in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and Kaiserslautern, Ostrowski immigrated to the United Kingdom with his mother in 1994, settling in Surrey. He first attended Nower Lodge School, Dorking (now defunct), then moved in 1997 to Colet Court (now St Paul’s Junior School). In 2002, Ostrowski became a King’s Scholar and Music Scholar at Eton College, where he achieved 10 A-levels, including Classical Greek, history, linguistics, mathematics, and music.
From 2007 to 2010, Ostrowski studied philosophy, politics, and economics at the University of Oxford, winning a Demy-fellowship and music scholarship at Magdalen College, and graduating with a First. He continued his studies with an M.Phil in political theory (2010–12), studying with Michael Freeden, Lois McNay, David Miller, Mark Philp, and Adam Swift, and a D.Phil. in politics (2012–17), under the supervision of Michael Freeden. His thesis Twilight of the pollsters: A social theory of mass opinion in late modernity offered a framework to understand the crisis of opinion polling industry, bringing into conversation literature from the history of ideas, opinion research, political science, social psychology, and sociological theory. In 2013, Ostrowski won election to an Examination Fellowship in politics at All Souls College, where he was mentored by Jeremy Waldron and Cécile Fabre.
Career
On completing his D.Phil., Ostrowski undertook a systematic reorientation towards the history of ideas and the study of ideologies. In 2018, he embarked on a multi-volume translation of the collected works of Eduard Bernstein, three volumes of which have been released so far: Eduard Bernstein on Social Democracy and International Politics (2018), Eduard Bernstein on the German Revolution (2019), and Eduard Bernstein on Socialism Past and Present (2021). Ostrowski also published his first monograph, Left Unity (2020), in which he makes the case for closer collaboration between the various groups and movements that comprise the progressive forces in society. During this time, he taught as a lecturer and tutor in politics at Christ Church and Magdalen College, Oxford, and the New College of the Humanities (now Northeastern University London).
In 2019, a Visiting Fellowship at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence introduced Ostrowski to the neglected Europeanist ideas of interwar progressive thinkers such as Max Cohen-Reuß and Alexandre Marc. As a result, in 2020 he moved to the EUI as a Max Weber Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies to pursue a project on the ideological history of Europeanism in the 20th century. He joined the Young Academics Network of the Foundation for European Progressive Studies, embarking on a multi-year project investigating the prospects for a European Universal Basic Income, which culminated in the book A Radical Bargain for Europe (2024). He also worked with the Progressive Alliance to draft an action plan for how international institutions can resist democratic backsliding, informed by ‘best practice’ among global stakeholders. During his time at the EUI, Ostrowski brought out his second monograph Ideology (2022), in which he develops the first statement of his distinctive approach to ideology theory, building on the morphological approach pioneered by Michael Freeden.
Alongside his academic work, Ostrowski has been an active contributor to policy debates at the UK, European, and global level. In 2012–13, he acted as Head of Research for the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Taxation in the UK Parliament, evaluating the opportunities for fiscal divergence in an independent Scotland. Ostrowski took up an offer to join the thinktank ResPublica in 2022 to develop a new strand of research on lifelong learning, integrated tertiary education, and the political economy of skills. In 2023, he oversaw the conversion of this work into a new education policy thinktank, the Lifelong Education Institute (LEI), and was appointed its founding director, with Ann Limb as the LEI’s inaugural Chair. At the same time, Ostrowski joined the editorial team of the Journal of Political Ideologies, succeeding Michael Freeden and Mathew Humphrey as Editor-in-Chief, and taking up a position as Honorary Assistant Professor at the Centre for Research into Ideas and the Study of Political Ideologies, University of Nottingham. In 2024, Ostrowski left his role at the Lifelong Education Institute and returned to Oxford as an ESRC Policy Fellow and Researcher at the Blavatnik School of Government.
Music
Ostrowski began to learn piano at the age of 3, followed soon after by the clarinet, organ, and music composition, studying with Ruth Nye, Stephen Goss, and James Weeks. Throughout his school years, he participated in Jugend musiziert and Jeunesses Musicales performance and composition competitions in Dublin, London, Nuremberg, Stockholm, and Weikersheim.
He remains an active pianist and composer, writing above all for keyboard, influenced by late 19th- and early 20th-century Classical composers such as Béla Bartók, Lili Boulanger, Paul Hindemith, Elizabeth Maconchy, Max Reger, Dmitri Shostakovich, Richard Strauss, Germaine Tailleferre, and Ralph Vaughan Williams. During the Covid-19 pandemic, he performed and recorded the entirety of J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations, published on his YouTube channel The Piano Diaries.
= Selected compositions
=Processional March (2012) for organ, to celebrate the wedding of two undergraduate friends in Magdalen College, Oxford.
Fugue in E (2019) for piano.
Reverie (2020) for piano.
Concert Fantasia on Bella Ciao (2020) for piano, to mark the 75th anniversary of V.E. Day.
Suite-sonata degli ostinati (2020) in four movements for piano, as a leaving gift at the end of his Fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford.
Hochzeitsstück (2022) for harmonium/piano, to celebrate the wedding of two graduate friends in Bad Gastein, Austria.
Sri Saraswati stotram (2024) for piano.
Honours
In 2021, Ostrowski was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, United Kingdom. In 2023, he was appointed as one of the inaugural members of the Chamber of Legal Studies of the Nicolaus Copernicus Academy, Poland.
Selected works
= Monographs
=Left Unity: Manifesto for a Progressive Alliance (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020)
Ideology (Polity, 2022)
(with Dominic Afscharian, Viktoriia Muliavka, and Lukáš Siegel) A Radical Bargain for Europe: Progressive Visions of a European Basic Income (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024)
= Translations
=Eduard Bernstein on Social Democracy and International Politics: Essays and Other Writings (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)
Eduard Bernstein on the German Revolution: Selected Historical Writings (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)
Eduard Bernstein on Socialism Past and Present: Essays and Lectures on Ideology (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021)
= Articles
=‘Social democracy and the “Europe question”: Lessons from Weimar?’, Renewal 27(1) (2019), 41–51.
‘How (Not) to Form a Progressive Alliance: Lessons from the History of Left Cooperation’, The Political Quarterly 92(1) (2021), 23–31.
‘Social Democracy and “positive” foreign policy: the evolution of Eduard Bernstein’s international thought, 1914–1920’, History of Political Thought 42(3) (2021), 520–64.
‘Editorial: Ideology studies and comparative political thought’, Journal of Political Ideologies 27(1) (2022), 1–10.
‘“Reform or revolution”, redux: Eduard Bernstein on the 1918–19 German Revolution’, Historical Research 95(268), 213–39 (2022).
(with Dominic Afscharian, Viktoriia Muliavka, and Lukáš Siegel) ‘The state of the UBI debate: Mapping the arguments for and against UBI’, Basic Income Studies 17 (2022).
‘From “noble patriotism” to the “republic of peoples”: Eduard Bernstein and the “national question” in Social Democracy’, History of Political Thought 43(3) (2022), 517–54.
(with Dominic Afscharian, Viktoriia Muliavka, and Lukáš Siegel) ‘Into the unknown: Empirical UBI trials as Social Europe’s risk insurance’, European Journal of Social Security 24(3) (2022).
‘Editorial: The ideological morphology of left–centre–right’, Journal of Political Ideologies 28(1) (2023), 1–15.
‘Europeanism: A historical view’, Contemporary European History 32(2) (2023), 287–304.
‘Editorial: Ideology and the individual’, Journal of Political Ideologies 29(1) (2024), 1–25.
= Reports
=Achieving Autonomy: What the independence referendum means for Scotland’s fiscal future (All-Party Parliamentary Group on Taxation, UK Parliament, 2013)
(with Dominic Afscharian, Viktoriia Muliavka, and Lukáš Siegel) The European Basic Income: Delivering on Social Europe (Foundation for European Progressive Studies, 2021)
(with Dominic Afscharian) Building Resilient Democracies: Challenges and Solutions across the Globe (Foundation for European Progressive Studies, 2022)
Behavioural standards and learning outcomes in the English comprehensive school system (ResPublica, 2023)
Behaving to learn: Best practice lessons for the behavioural turn in English schools policy (ResPublica, 2023)
Hungry to learn: Lifelong Learning Pathways for the agri-food sector (Lifelong Education Institute, 2023)
Making skills work: The path to solving the productivity crisis (City & Guilds and Lifelong Education Institute, 2024)