Max Ridge is an incoming fifth year PhD candidate in the Department of Politics. His dissertation reconstructs the democratic thought of G.D.H. Cole, a prominent British socialist of the twentieth century. While many scholars advocate for the application of basic democratic principles to the workplace, Max's dissertation investigates how the politics of the workplace may itself inform and complicate those very principles. In looking to the past, he brings Cole's views of technological competence, professional ethics, and labor organizing to bear on a democratic theory for the future. Max earned his B.A. in History at Columbia University and his M.A. in the History of Political Thought and Intellectual History at Queen Mary, University of London and University College London as a Fulbright Scholar.