Ernesto Laclau studied at the Universities of Buenos Aires and Oxford and obtained a PhD at the University of Essex. At present he holds a chair in Political Theory at the University of Essex where he is also Director of the doctoral programme in Ideology and Discourse Analysis at the Centre for Theoretical Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences. He has been Visiting Professor at the universities of Toronto, Chicago, California (Irvine), Paris (Nouvelle Sorbonne), and the New School for Social Research, as well as various Latin American universities. He has been made Honorary Professor of the universities of Buenos Aires and La Plata (Argentina). He has obtained a Guggenheim Fellowship and has been a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), the Wilson Center (Washington) and the Institute of Humanities (California). He has also lectured extensively in many universities in North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Australia and South Africa. He is author of Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory (London 1977); New Reflections on the Revolution of our Time, (London, 1990); Emancipation(s) (London, 1996); co-author (with Chantal Mouffe) of Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, (London 1985); and editor and contributor to The Making of Political Identities, (London l994).