Professor Timothy O'Leary

Keywords

ethics

philosophy

critical theory

interpreting literature

Fields of Research (FoR)

Philosophy, History and philosophy of specific fields, History and Philosophy of Specific Fields, Aesthetics

Biography

Timothy O’Leary is a philosopher who has worked and studied in Ireland, Paris, Hong Kong, and Australia.

His research is in the area of contemporary European philosophy and literary studies, including the work of Michel Foucault and Jacques Rancière. He has published 2 monographs, co-edited 3 volumes, guest-edited 2 Journal Special Issues, and published many journal articles and book chapters on topics including the work of Michel Foucault,...view more

Timothy O’Leary is a philosopher who has worked and studied in Ireland, Paris, Hong Kong, and Australia.

His recent work includes:

* An essay on “Fiction’s Critique: Gray’s Poor Things and the Conduct of Sensibility”, in Textual Practice, in press.

* An article on Jacques Rancière, Virginia Woolf, Annie Ernaux, and "sensibility", in the Journal of Modern Literature, 2024.

In 2022 he published a co-edited collection of essays "The Ends of Critique: Methods, Institutions, Politics" (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022): https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781786616463/The-Ends-of-Critique-Methods-Institutions-Politics, which included his chapter on Nietzsche and "vivisection" as a metaphor for critique.

He is co-Convenor of the UNSW research group Critique Now: https://www.unsw.edu.au/arts-design-architecture/our-schools/humanities-languages/our-research/centres-networks/critique-network.

He is co-General Editor of the New Critical Humanities book series with Rowman & Littlefield: https://rowman.com/Action/SERIES/_/RLINCH/New-Critical-Humanities.

Before coming to UNSW in 2018, he taught philosophy for 17 years at the University of Hong Kong, where he also served as Associate Dean of Arts (Research & Postgraduate), the Head of the School of Humanities, and an elected member of HKU Council. At UNSW, he was Head of the School of Humanities & Languages from Aug 2018 to Dec 2023.

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-8621-696X

My Grants

My research has been funded by a large grant from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council.

My Research Activities

* I am co-Convenor of the UNSW research group Critique Now: https://www.unsw.edu.au/arts-design-architecture/our-schools/humanities-languages/our-research/centres-networks/critique-network

* I recently published a co-edited volume: K. Thiele, B.M. Kaiser, T. O'Leary (eds). 2022. The Ends of Critique: Methods, Institutions, Politics. London: Rowman & Littlefield: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781786616463/The-Ends-of-Critique-Methods-Institutions-Politics

* I am currently working on a long-term project on concepts of "sensibility" in ethics and literature. This will develop some ideas from the work of Jacques Rancière, combined with a reading of various works of literature ranging from Henry James and Virginia Woolf to Anna Burns and Annie Ernaux.

* I am involved in the work of an international research group called Terra Critica, based at the University of Utrecht and including researchers from a range of humanities disciplines based at universities across Europe, the United States, and Australia. http://terracritica.net/

* I am co-General Editor of the series "New Critical Humanities" at Rowman & Littlefield International.

https://www.rowmaninternational.com/our-publishing/series/new-critical-humanities/

My Research Supervision

Supervision keywords

philosophy

aesthetics

ethics

Areas of supervision

Contemporary European philosophy; Foucault; Rancière; philosophy and literature.

Currently supervising

At UNSW, I have Supervised and co-Supervised PhD candidates working within a range of disciplines, in the areas of 20th century French philosophy, ethics, comparative Chinese-Western philosophy, literature and embodiment, and social theory.

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