Centre for Philosophy and Critical thought people

Find out about the academics, advisory Board, affiliates, and doctoral researchers involved in the centre.

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Director

Image of Dr Julia Ng

Dr Julia Ng

Julia Ng is a Reader in Critical Theory and founding Director of the Centre for Philosophy and Critical Thought. She specialises in the links between modern mathematics, political thought, and theories of history and language in the 20th century, particularly in the work of Walter Benjamin. 

Co-Directors

Image of Svenja Bromberg

Svenja Bromberg

Svenja Bromberg is a social theorist with expertise in Marxism and in French and German social theory from the 19th to the 21st century.

image of Alberto Toscano

Alberto Toscano

Alberto Toscano’s current research is divided into three main strands: a theoretical and historical inquiry into the politics of authoritarianism and their links to the racial, geopolitical and gendered crises of capital, set out in his recent book Late Fascism: Race, Capitalism and the Politics of Crisis; the study of tragedy as a framework through which to understand collective politics and its discontents, from decolonisation to climate action; and the development of ‘real abstraction’ as a heuristic for the analysis contemporary capitalism, notably in its nexus with processes of racialization, automation and digitalization.  

Members

Image of Vikki Bell

Professor Vikki Bell

Vikki Bell is the author of four monographs, including Culture and Performance (Bloomsbury, 2007). Widely published in peer-reviewed journals, she has addressed questions of ethics, aesthetics, subjectivity and politics across the social sciences and theoretical humanities.

Recently her work has explored cultural-aesthetic aspects of transitional justice in Argentina, where the research has been funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council, and, in 2015-7, by the Economic & Social Research Council, a project which extended her empirical work to include Chile.

 

 

Dr James Burton

James Burton is Lecturer in Cultural Studies and Cultural History. His research interests include cultural theory, science fiction, posthumanism, process philosophy, ecology and theories of fiction.  He is the author of 'The Philosophy of Science Fiction: Henri Bergson and the Fabulations of Philip K. Dick' and associate editor, alongside Erich Hörl, of 'General Ecology: The New Ecological Paradigm', (2017) a collection of theoretical essays on the contemporary imbrication of different kinds of ecology. 

Dr Deirdre Daly

Deirdre Daly is a Lecturer in Academic Literacies with a background in philosophy and research interests in creative and therapeutic writing techniques, Comparative and Modern European Philosophy.  

Dr Sultan Doughan

Sultan Doughan is a political anthropologist specialised in the secular governance of religious difference within liberal democracies in Europe.  

Dr Yesim Yaprak Yildiz

Yesim Yaprak Yildiz researches confessional and testimonial forms of truth-telling on past atrocities. She is currently working on her monograph on production of truth and subjectivity in public confessions of Turkish state actors on state violence against Kurds during the 1990s.  

Dr Jeremy Larkins

Jeremy Larkins is a lecturer in International Relations with a primary research area in the cultural and intellectual history of international political theory. His current research pursues two avenues: revisiting the pre-history of modernity and international relations, he is exploring the international imaginary of Dante’s political theology; and second, an elucidation of Hegel’s understanding of international relations as derived from a reading of the Phenomenology of Spirit. 

Photo of Professor Will Davies

Professor Will Davies

Will Davies is a sociologist and political economist, working on diverse topics, including neoliberalism, happiness science, environmental politics and anti-expert politics.

What links this work is an interest in the interface of knowledge and power, drawing on the work of Michel Foucault, Luc Boltanski and Max Weber.

Dr Dan McQuillan 

Dan McQuillan is a Lecturer in Creative and Social Computing and author of 'Resisting AI - An Anti-fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence'. 

Professor Nirmal Puwar

Nirmal Puwar researches space and politics with respect to bodies, race and gender, with a special emphasis on creative methods and curating spaces. 

Image of Dr Jenny Doussan

Dr Jenny Doussan

Dr Jenny Doussan is interested in the convergence of language and image in art and media, and the political experience of such material encounters.

Image of Sara R Farris

Sara R Farris

Sara Farris worked at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, University of Amsterdam and King’s College, and held Fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (2012-13), Institute for Advanced Studies in Konstanz (2011) and Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht (2009-2010) before joining Goldsmiths in 2013.

Sara's work to date has focused on the orientalist underpinnings of sociological theory, which  Sara explored in my first monograph on Max Weber’s sociology of religion, and on theories of gender, race and social reproduction, particularly as they apply to the analysis of migrant women in Western Europe.

Image of Dr Jean-Paul Martinon

Dr Jean-Paul Martinon

Jean-Paul Martinon investigates time in its staging in museums, its advent, its gender, its neglect, and the way it is used and abused to structure human life. His research focuses primarily on contemporary continental philosophy with a particular interest in the work of Spinoza, Levinas, Nancy, Chalier, Kagame, Mudimbe, and Meillassoux. 

Image of Professor Michael Newman

Professor Michael Newman

Michael Newman began working at Goldsmiths in 2008 as Professor of Art Writing while simultaneously serving as a visiting tutor for Lesley University's MFA programme and a tenured associate professor at the School of Art Institute of Chicago.

Image of Professor Simon O'Sullivan

Professor Simon O'Sullivan

Simon O’Sullivan is a theorist and artist working at the intersection of contemporary art practice, performance and continental philosophy.

Image of Dr Lynn Turner

Dr Lynn Turner

Lynn Turner’s research explores how animal and sexual differences matter in visual and aural culture as well as continental philosophy, literature and psychoanalysis.

She is the arts editor of parallax, one of the assistant editors of Derrida Today and sits on the board of several book series as well as Goldsmiths Press.

 

Image of Dr Sam McAuliffe

Dr Sam McAuliffe

Sam McAuliffe’s research is based on modern European philosophy and critical theory, with an emphasis on modern and contemporary art and aesthetics. 

 

Image of Dr Andrea Mura

Dr Andrea Mura

Andrea Mura is member of the Centre for Postcolonial Studies and the Centre for Philosophy and Critical Thought at Goldsmiths where he co-convenes the annual research Seminar ‘Critiques of Violence’. 

Andrea has research and teaching interests in continental philosophy, comparative political thought and postcolonial theory. 

In Memoriam 

Mark Fisher (Visual Cultures) † 

Marina Vishmidt (Media, Communications, and Cultural Studies) † 

In Memoriam 

  • Howard Caygill (CRMEP) 
  • Josh Cohen - English & Comparative Literature
  • Eyal Weizman - Visual Cultures/Centre for Research Architecture

  • Karl Baldacchino (Sociology) Thesis title: Cartographies of Indifference: Resistance in Western Contemporary Critical Thought
  • Andrés Cabrera Sanhueza (Sociology) 
    Thesis title: Crisis of Hegemony in the Chilean Neoliberal ‘Laboratory’ (2019–2023). An Exercise in Historical Interpretation  
  • Rachel Cummings (Sociology, Goldsmiths / University of Bath) 
    Thesis title: Health professionals’ Responses to Deathbed Phenomena: Implications for Medical Knowledge and Care 
  • Alistair Bernal Holmes (Sociology) 
    Thesis title: Out of time: Exploring the Temporality of the Climate Crisis 
  • Jack Morson (English and Creative Writing / Critical Theory) 
    Thesis title: Against Monolingualism, 1975-1996: Jacques Derrida’s Poetic Thinking (Funded by CHASE AHRC studentship) 
  • Florence Platford (English and Comparative Literature) 
    Thesis title: Political Occultology: Walter Benjamin’s ‘Surrealism’ and the Figure of the Secret Society (Funded by departmental bursary) 
  • Vajid Punakkath (English and Creative Writing / Critical Theory) 
    Thesis title: Rebel-Subject at the Dawn of the Biopolitical: A Critical-Theoretical Study of the Mappila Rebellion, 1836-1921 (Funded by Generation Delta studentship) 
  • Mais Robinson (Theatre and Performance) 
    Thesis title: Playing the Picket: Using Theatre Techniques to Support Worker Organising in the UK Hospitality Sector

    Recent Doctoral Research

  • Germanos Al Hassan, Camille (English and Comparative Literature, 2025) 
    Thesis title: Places and Non-Places for Language 
  • Murè, Federica (English and Comparative Literature, 2024) 
    Thesis title: Textures of the Liminal Image at the Crossroads of Modern German Aesthetics, Art History, and Contemporary Visual Cultures: A Comparative Study from Benjamin to Didi-Huberman (Funded by CHASE AHRC studentship) 
  • Ursitti, Filippo (English and Comparative Literature / Critical Theory, 2023) 
    Thesis title: Reinterpreting Günther Anders’ Polemics with Adorno and Heidegger Through the Prism of Anders’ Musicology 
  • Lanci, Yari (Sociology, 2022). 
    Thesis title: Governing Time: Temporality and the Marking of Exploitable Subjects in Marx and Foucault 
  • Mozzachiodi, Roberto (MCCS, 2021) 
    Thesis title: The End of Philosophy in Marx: Henri Lefebvre, Louis Althusser, and Jacques Derrida 
  • Law, Christopher (English and Comparative Literature, 2019) 
    Thesis title: The Life in Language: The Concept of Uncriticizability from Goethe to Benjamin (Funded by CHASE AHRC studentship) 
  • Lagos, Felipe (Sociology, 2017). 
    Thesis title: The Misadventures of Latin American Marxism: Intellectual Journeys Towards the Deprovincialization of Marxist Thought 
  • Vandeputte, Tom (English and Comparative Literature, 2017). 
    Thesis title: Critique of Journalistic Reason: Language and History in Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Benjamin. 
  • Bromberg, Svenja (Sociology, 2016). 
    Thesis title: Thinking ‘emancipation’ after Marx: A conceptual analysis of emancipation between citizenship and revolution. 
  • Krapivina, Ksenija (Visual Cultures) 
    Thesis title: ‘Madness in the Archive: Occupying the Gap between Reason and Non-reason’ 

2025- 

Camille Germanos Al-Hassan, Postdoctoral Affiliate (PhD Goldsmiths) 

2020-2021 

Søren Mau, Postdoctoral Researcher (funding agency: Independent Research Fund Denmark) 

2017-2018 (Visiting Researcher); 2023-2025 (Research Fellow) 

Jacob McGuinn, Associate Lecturer, English and Comparative Literature, Goldsmiths (PhD Queen Mary University of London) 

2016-2017 

Matthias Lievens, Assistant Professor, Institute for Philosophy, KU Leuven 

Fernanda Medina, M.A researcher, PUCV (Valparaiso, Chile) 

2015-2016 

Katja Cicigoj, PhD fellow, Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture, Giessen / CRMEP, Kingston 

Isabell Dahms, PhD student, CRMEP Kingston University 

Miranda Davidson, PhD student, Politics, Queen Mary University of London 

Laura Lee Schmidt, PhD candidate, History of Science, Harvard University 

Chryssa Srdolia, Postdoctoral researcher, Goldsmiths