Critical Research Association Melbourne

Convenors:

Justin Clemens (Arts)

Justin Clemens is an Associate Professor in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne. He has published extensively on psychoanalysis, contemporary European philosophy, poetry, and contemporary Australian art and literature.

Joe Hughes (Arts)

Joe Hughes is a Senior Lecturer in English and Theatre Studies at the University of Melbourne. He has written widely on post-war French thought and the history of the novel.

Jessica Marian (Arts)

Jessica Marian is a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Culture and Communication contributing to the ARC Discovery Project “Journals in Theory: Practices of Academic Judgement”. She recently completed her PhD on the genre of the review in post-war French philosophy and has published in New Literary History and Australian Literary Studies. She is co-editor of Parrhesia: A Journal of Critical Philosophy.

Elliot Patsoura (Arts)

Elliot Patsoura is a subject coordinator and tutor in English and Theatre Studies. His research interests include the literature, science, and philosophy of the Romantic Era, the long history and imminent futures of geoengineering, and twentieth-century continental philosophy. His research has appeared in Angelaki, New Literary History, and Parrhesia, and he is currently completing a monograph on the use and misuse of analogy throughout European modernity.

Associates:

Lucy Benjamin (Melbourne School of Design)

Lucy Benjamin is a postdoctoral research fellow in architectural philosophy at the Melbourne School of Design. She has a PhD in comparative literature from the University of London. Her current research explores practices and conditions of repair broadly construed and she has previously written on feminist ethics and Hannah Arendt.

Bertrand Bourgeois (Arts)

Bertrand Bourgeois is a Senior Lecturer in French Studies in the School of Languages and Linguistics. He is a specialist of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century French Literature and Visual Culture.

Martin Bush (Arts)

Martin Bush is Senior Research Fellow in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne. Martin is a cultural historian of science communication with a focus on visual cultures of popular astronomy and expertise in public reasoning practices and trust in science.

Danny Butt (VCA)

Dr Danny Butt is Senior Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Practice and Graduate Research Convenor for Design and Production at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. His book Artistic Research in the Future Academy was published by Intellect/University of Chicago Press in 2017. He is on the Editorial Board of the Journal for Artistic Research; is co-convenor of the Asia Pacific Artistic Research Network and works with the art collective Local Time.

Kristian Camilleri (Arts)

Kristian Camilleri is a lecturer in the History and Philosophy of Science program in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies. His research interests include the interplay between culture, philosophy and physics in the first half of the twentieth century, the structure of thought experiments in science, and the changing role of ‘popular science’ in the scientific culture of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

André Dao (Melbourne Law School)

André Dao is is a research fellow with the ARC Laureate Program on Global Corporations and International Law at the Melbourne Law School. He was previously a PhD candidate at the Institute for International Law and the Humanities, also at the Melbourne Law School. His PhD research focused on the intersections between international human rights law and digital data technologies. He is also a creative writer of fiction and non-fiction.

Cristóbal Escobar (Arts)

Cristóbal Escobar is a Lecturer in Screen Studies at the University of Melbourne. His research interests centre on film-philosophy, political aesthetics, and Latin American cinemas. He is the head of international film programming at the Festival Internacional de Documentales de Santiago (FIDOCS) and co-founder of the Screening Ideas program.

Hélène Frichot (Melbourne School of Design)

Hélène Frichot is an architectural theorist and philosopher, writer and critic, and Professor of Architecture and Philosophy in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, University of Melbourne, Australia. She is Guest Professor and the former Director of Critical Studies in Architecture, as well as Professor of Critical Studies and Gender Theory, in the School of Architecture, KTH (Royal Institute of Technology) Stockholm, Sweden, where she was based between 2012-2019.

Ben Gook (Arts)

Ben Gook is a Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of Melbourne. He works on areas including psychoanalysis, film, contemporary German history and culture, and is currently researching negative affects in capitalism (disaffection and alienation).

Jonathan Laskovsky (VCA)

Jonathan’s research interests include liminal spaces, borders, airports, technology and art, with a particular focus on urban built form and infrastructure. Alongside this, Jonathan has taught into Landscape Architecture, Literature, Communications, Art and Design programs at La Trobe, RMIT and here at the University of Melbourne. He is currently a Lecturer In Critical Theory in the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music.

Birgit Lang (Arts)

Birgit Lang is a Professor in German in the School of Languages and Linguistics. She has published widely on psychoanalysis, the history of sexuality, the history and theory of translation, and the cultural history of German and Austrian refugees from National Socialism.

Michelle Menzies (Arts)

Michelle Menzies is a scholar and curator of film history and aesthetics. She is an Honorary Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Her current book project situates Henri Bergson’s visual thought within the framework of mediation and aesthetics.

Joeri Mol (Business & Economics)

Joeri Mol is a Senior Lecturer in Organisation Studies and Co-Director of the Cluster for the study of Organisation Society and Markets (COSM) at the University of Melbourne. He researches markets—both inside and outside organisation and is particularly interested in processes of financialisation and evaluation and how price and value are brought into an often-uneasy relationship.

Lynda Ng (Arts)

Lynda Ng is a Lecturer in English and Theatre Studies at the University of Melbourne.  She works in the field of transnational studies, with her research encompassing Australian literature (with particular emphasis on Aboriginal literature), Chinese literature (especially diasporic literature) and postcolonial literatures (focusing on the Global South).

Sundhya Pahuja (Melbourne Law School)

Sundhya Pahuja is the Director of the Laureate Research Program in Global Corporations and International Law, Director of Melbourne Law School's Institute for International Law and the Humanities (IILAH), and the Director of Studies for the master’s programs in International Law, and Law and Development. She is currently Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, University of Cambridge. Sundhya’s research focuses on the history, theory, and practice of international law in historical context. She has a particular interest in international law and the relationship between global North and South countries

Elizabeth Presa (VCA)

Elizabeth Presa is an artist who teaches critical art theory and sculpture at the VCA, Faculty of Fine Arts and Music.  From 2003-2018 she was the Head of the VCA’s Centre for Ideas, an interdisciplinary centre focusing on the critical engagement between the visual and performing Arts and Philosophy. Elizabeth’s sculpture practice experiments with environmentally sustainable materials and processes including ancient casting and moulding and construction techniques.

Lisa Radford (VCA)

Lisa Radford is an artist, writer and Lecturer in Art, Painting at the Victorian College of the Arts. Her work explores the shared socio-political space between images, place and people. Conversation and collaboration form the fundamental basis of her processes and methodology as means for creating iterative and generative texts, exhibitions and seminars that span a range of media including painting, publishing, performance and installation.

Juliet Rogers (Arts)

Dr Juliet Rogers is an Associate Professor in Criminology in the School of Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne. She has published extensively in the areas of political, legal, and postcolonial theory, using psychoanalysis as a tool for interrogating the subject's relation to prohibition and sovereignty.

Reading Groups and Study Sessions

CRAM is associated with a variety of independent reading groups dedicated to intensive study of significant figures, texts and movements in the history of critical philosophy and theory.

No advanced preparation is required for the reading groups. All are welcome to attend: no institutional affiliation is needed and certainly no expertise. Simply come along and read.

Please contact the relevant reading group convenor for the latest update on the reading schedule and to confirm location/time.

Special Study Sessions

ECR First Book Writing Group. Weekly, Friday 12pm-4pm. Contact @Jessica Marian

ECR Grant Development. By appointment. Contact @Justin Clemens or @Joe Hughes