Staff and Governance
To contact the IMEMS administrative office please use the following details:
T: 0191 334 42974
Core Staff
The day-to-day running of IMEMS is the responsibility of the Core Executive Committee, comprising the Director and Associate Directors and the Administrator.

Dr Maria Dimova-Cookson, BA (Sofia), MA (York), DPhil (York)
Contact Dr Maria Dimova-Cookson (email at maria.dimova-cookson@durham.ac.uk)
Biography
Maria Dimova-Cookson completed her DPhil in Politics on the political philosophy of the British idealists at the University of York. She has previously studied philosophy as an undergraduate at Sofia University and MA in political philosophy at the University of York. Her academic appointments have been at UCL, as a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow, UEA, as a visiting fellow and University of Sheffield as a lecturer in political theory. Since September 2005 Dr Dimova-Cookson has been a lecturer in politics at Durham University.
Dr Dimova-Cookson has been actively involved in the setting up and the running of the PSA British idealism specialist group. She has been a co-editor and is currently on the editorial board of the journal Contemporary Political Theory. She has been involved in the work of Britain and Ireland Association for Political Thought by convening the annual conference in 2012. Dr Dimova-Cookson is a director of the Centre for the History of Political Thought.
Indicators of Esteem
- 2009: Contemporary Political Theory: Review Editor
Research Groups
School of Government and International Affairs
- Durham Human Rights Centre (Law School)
- Nations, Nationalisms and Diasporas
- Political Theory
Research Interests
- British idealism and British political thought in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century
- Theories of liberty
- Justice and human rights
- Multiculturalism
- The political philosophy of the British Idealists, moral issues in contemporary political theory: the nature of the moral good, solution of moral conflicts
Publications
Authored book
- Dimova-Cookson, Maria (2001). T.H.Green's Moral and Political Philosophy: A Phenomenological Perspective. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Chapter in book
- Dimova-Cookson, Maria (2014). “Do We Owe More to Fellow Nationals? The Particular and Universal Ethics in Bosanquet’s General Will and Miller’s Public Culture”. In Ethical Citizenship. British Idealism and the Politics of Recognition. Brooks, Thom Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 200-223.
- Dimova-Cookson, Maria (2014). “Welfarist and Moral Justifications of the Strong State: Reconciling Hobhouse’s and Bosanquet’s Perspectives on the Role of the State”. In The Victorian Legacy in Political Thought. Marshall, Catherine & Guy, Stéphane Oxford: Peter Lang. 145-166.
- Dimova-Cookson, Maria (2013). 'Defending Isaiah Berlin's Distinctions between Positive and Negative Freedoms'. In Isaiah Berlin and the Politics of Freedom: Berlin's 'Two Concepts of Liberty' 50 years Later. Baum, Bruce David & Nichols, Robert New York: Routledge. 73-86.
- Dimova-Cookson, Maria (2013). “T.H. Green”. In Wiley-Blackwell's International Encyclopaedia of Ethics. LaFollette, Hugh Wiley-Blackwell. 2238-2243.
- Dimova-Cookson, Maria (2012). 'Subaltern Studies, Post-colonial Marxism and ‘Finding Your Place to Begin from’ An Interview with Dipesh Chakrabarty'. In Dialogues with Contemporary Political Theorists. Browning, Gary, Prokhovnik, Raia & Dimova-Cookson, Maria Palgrave Macmillan. 58-73.
- Dimova-Cookson, Maria (2012). “Late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British thought”. In The Routledge Companion to Social and Political Philosophy. Gaus, Gerald & D’Agostino, Fred London: Routledge. 146-157.
- Browning, Gary, Prokhovnik, Raia & Dimova-Cookson, Maria (2012). Introduction - Dialogues with Contemporary Political Theorists: Then and Now. In Dialogues with Contemporary Political Theorists. Browning, Gary, Prokhovnik, Raia & Dimova-Cookson, Maria Palgrave Macmillan. 1-23.
- Dimova-Cookson, Maria (2012). Republicanism, Philosophy of Freedom and the History of Ideas: An Interview with Philip Pettit. In Dialogues with Contemporary Political Theorists. Browning, Gary, Prokhovnik, Raya & Dimova-Cookson, Maria Palgrave. 155-169.
- Dimova-Cookson, Maria (2009). "Introduction". In Multiculturalism and Moral Conflict. Dimova-Cookson, Maria & Stirk, P.M.R. Routledge. 1-16.
- Dimova-Cookson, Maria (2007). A new scheme of positive and negative freedom: re-constructing T. H. Green on freedom. In T.H. Green. Morrow, John Aldershot: Ashgate. 149-173.
- Dimova-Cookson, Maria (2006). 'Resolving Moral Conflicts:British Idealist and Contemporary Liberal Approaches to Value Pluralism and Moral Conduct'. In T.H.Green: Ethics, Metaphysics and Political Philosophy. Dimova-Cookson, Maria & Mander, William J. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 292-315.
Edited book
- Gary Browning, Raia Prokhovnik & Maria Dimova-Cookson (2012). Dialogues with Contemporary Political Theorists. International Political Theory. Palgrave.
- Dimova-Cookson, Maria & Stirk, P.M.R. (2009). Multiculturalism and Moral Conflict. Routledge Innovations in Political Theory. London: Routledge: Routledge.
- Dimova-Cookson, Maria & Mander, William (2006). T.H. Green: Ethics, Metaphysics and Political Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Journal Article
- Dimova-Cookson, Maria (2013). Can social justice, economic redistribution and voluntariness fit into a single concept of liberty? Pettit versus Hobhouse. International Journal of Social Economics 40(12): 1108-1122.
- Dimova-Cookson, Maria (2012). 'Liberty as Welfare: the basecamp counterpart of positive freedom'. Collingwood and British Idealism Studies 18(2): 133-165.
- Dimova-Cookson, Maria (2011). Justice as a secondary moral ideal: the British idealists and the personal ethics perspective in understanding social justice. European Journal of Political Theory 10(1): 46-70.
- Dimova-Cookson, Maria. (2010). “Republicanism, philosophy of freedom and the history of ideas: An interview with Philip Pettit”. Contemporary Political Theory 9(4): 477-489.
- Dimova-Cookson, Maria (2007). On the link between the desire to be good and the nature of the good – a rejoinder to John Offer’s reply. British Journal of Politics and International Relations 9(3): 533-534.
- Dimova-Cookson, Maria (2005). 'Internalism and Externalism in Ethics Applied to the Liberal-Communitarian Debate'. British Journal of Politics and International Relations 7(1): 18-28.
- Dimova-Cookson, Maria (2004). 'Conceptual Clarity, Freedom and Normative Ideas: Reply to Blau'. Political Theory 32(4): 554-562.
- Dimova-Cookson, Maria (2003). 'Bentham, Mill and Green on the Nature of the Good'. Journal of Bentham Studies 6.
- Dimova-Cookson, Maria (2003). A New Scheme of Positive and Negative Freedom: Re-constructing T.H. Green on Freedom. Political Theory 31(4): 508-32.
Full Executive Committee
Our Full Executive Committee is made up of the Core Executive Committee, listed above, plus a number of executive members including:
International Advisory Board
We are extremely fortunate to have be able to call on the help and guidance of colleagues from around the world who help to shape and guide our direction, strategy and international reach. Our current Advisory Board members are: