Researchers

Dimitris Vardoulakis was the inaugural chair of Philosophy at Western Sydney University. He is the author of The Doppelgänger: Literature’s Philosophy (2010), Sovereignty and its Other: Toward the Dejustification of Violence (2013), Freedom from the Free Will: On Kafka’s Laughter (2016), Stasis Before the State: Nine Theses on Agonistic Democracy (2018), and Spinoza, the Epicurean: Authority and Utility in Materialism (2020). He is the director of […]

Melinda Cooper is an ARC Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Sydney, Australia. She is the author of Life as Surplus: Biotechnology and Capitalism in the Neoliberal Era (Washington University Press, 2008) and coauthor, with Catherine Waldby, of Clinical Labor: Human Research Subjects and Tissue Donors […]

 Senior lecturer in cultural and social analysis at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. She has published widely on contemporary continental philosophy (Agamben, Foucault, Ranciere), theories of sovereignty and biopolitics, critical legal theory and human rights . Her book “Catastrophe and Redemption: The Political Thought of Giorgio Agamben” was published by SUNY in 2013.

Recently completed his PhD in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. He is the editor, together with Justin Clemens and Alex Murray, of The Work of Giorgio Agamben: Law, Literature, Life (Edinburgh, 2008), and the author of several articles and translations that have appeared in journals such as Angelaki and Theory and Event. He is […]

Melanie’s current research concerns the place of the animal in the constitution of the discipline of sociology in 19C France. She has particular interest in the social theory of Emile Durkheim, Gabriel Tarde, Henri Bergson, Michel Foucault and Georges Canguilhem.  She is interested in exploring the shifting relations between habits & creativity, notions of error […]

Justin Clemens is Associate Professor in the School of Culture and Communication at The University of Melbourne. He works on issues at the intersection of biopolitics and psychoanalysis. His recent work examines the question of torture in democracy, the relationship between language and slavery, as well as key concepts such as state of exception and testimony. His books […]

Pablo Leighton holds a PhD in Latino American studies from Universidad de Santiago de Chile, and in Media and cultural studies from Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. He also has a Master of Fine Arts in Filmmaking from Massachusetts College of Art (Boston, USA), and a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from Universidad Católica de Chile. […]

Paul Patton is Hongyi Chair Professor of Philosophy at Wuhan University, Professor of Philosophy in the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences  at Flinders University, and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at The University of New South Wales. He holds a Doctorat d’Université from The University of Paris VIII and an MA from The University […]