Michael J. Shapiro's research and teaching have been in the areas of political theory and philosophy, critical social theory, global politics, politics of media, politics of aesthetics, politics of culture, and indigenous politics. While his early research was in the areas of political psychology and decision-making, applied to voting, American foreign policy decision-making, and Norwegian Oil production decision-making, since the early 1980s his research and writing has been focused on compositional methods in a broad range of artistic media genres: dance, theatre, literature, film, painting, music, and architecture.