19 Facts About David Held

David Jonathan Andrew Held was a British political scientist who specialised in political theory and international relations.

David Held held a joint appointment as Professor of Politics and International Relations, and was Master of University College, at Durham University until his death.

David Held was a visiting Professor of Political Science at Libera Universita Internazionale degli Studi Sociali Guido Carli.

Together with Daniele Archibugi, Held had been prominent in the development of cosmopolitanism, and of cosmopolitan democracy in particular.

David Held was an active scholar on issues of globalisation, global governance and was joint editor-in-chief of the academic journal Global Policy.

David Held was born to industrialist Peter Held and Gisela in Britain where he spent most of his childhood.

David Held took his undergraduate degree from the University of Manchester; upon completing his doctoral studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology he conducted post-doctoral research at the University of Cambridge.

David Held held numerous visiting appointments in the United States, Australia, Canada, Spain and Italy, among other places.

David Held co-founded Polity press in 1984, which has become a leading publisher in the social sciences and humanities across the world.

David Held was the general editor for Global Policy, an academic journal started in 2008 that focuses on bridging the gap between academics and practitioners on issues of global significance.

David Held died in College on 2 March 2019 after suffering ill health.

David Held is survived by his wife, Psychoanalyst and Filmmaker Francesca Joseph and their two children Jacob and Zachary Joseph Held.

David Held is survived by Rosa and Josh Held, the children from a previous marriage to the novelist Michelle Spring.

David Held examined the question of whether the nation state alone, as typically assumed by political theory, can be the sole home of democracy, accountability and the rule of law.

The third element of David Held's work was to explore how and in what ways one can move beyond the crises and dilemmas of politics and governance in the contemporary world.

Accordingly, David Held's work explored, on the one hand, the shift in politics from nation states to what he called a world of 'overlapping communities of fate' and, on the other hand, how democratic standards and cosmopolitan values can be entrenched in the global order.

In pursuing this multilevel approach David Held saw himself working within the classic tradition of political theory which has always been concerned with how to characterize the world in which we live, how to develop and reach normative goals such as liberty, democracy and social justice, and how to move from where we are to where we might like to be.

David Held offered a contribution to a pressing dialogue of our times: how to resolve collective action problems, nationally and globally, through institutions and governance arrangements that enhance democracy, social justice and the participation of all citizens in a democratic public life.

David Held was an advisor of Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who received his PhD from LSE in 2008.