Keywords
Fields of Research (FoR)
Philosophy, History and philosophy of specific fields, History and Philosophy of Specific Fields, AestheticsBiography
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, in particular the work of Michel Foucault. He has published 2 monographs, co-edited 3 volumes (with 1 more coming soon), guest-edited 2 Journal Special Issues, and published many journal articles and book chapters on topics including the work of Michel Foucault, the...view more
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, in particular the work of Michel Foucault. He has published 2 monographs, co-edited 3 volumes (with 1 more coming soon), guest-edited 2 Journal Special Issues, and published many journal articles and book chapters on topics including the work of Michel Foucault, the relations between ethics and aesthetics, the ethical dimensions of literature, and philosophical approaches to happiness. He is co-General Editor of the New Critical Humanities book series with Rowman & Littlefield International. 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
In his position as Head of the School of Humanities & Languages at UNSW, he is particularly keen to promote the critical role of the study of humanities and languages in our contemporary world of splintered politics, structural racism and inequality, and a global environmental crisis. He is a UNSW Diversity Champion for Gender; and an LGBTIQ+ Ally.
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.
My Grants
My research has been funded by a large grant from the Hong Kong Research Grants Council.
My Research Activities
* 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
Areas of supervision
Contemporary European philosophy; Foucault; philosophy and literature.
Currently supervising
I currently co-Supervise PhD students working within a range of disciplines, in the areas of ethics, comparative Chinese-Western philosophy, literature and embodiment, and social theory.