TAPSS TEAM & GUEST FACULTY

Julia Jansen (Philosophy UCC) is a specialist in Phenomenology and Kantian philosophy, with particular research interests in the field of Aesthetics. She also works in the areas of feminism and critical theory. She is the co-editor of Rediscovering Aesthetics (Stanford 2009) and Critical Communities, Aesthetic Practices (forthcoming with Springer) and the author of Imagination in Transcendental Philosophy: Kant and Husserl Reconsidered (under review).

Kieran Keohane (Sociology UCC) is this year's Director of TAPSS. He is a cultural analyst who works in the interpretive tradition of Social & Political thought, drawing from traditions of sociology, philosophy, psychoanalysis and literary criticism. He is an editor of International Political Anthropology and reviewer for several other journals. He chairs the Graduate Education Committee of the Irish Social Sciences Platform.

Patrick O'Mahony (Sociology UCC) is the former director of the Center for European Social Research. His fields of interest range from the philosophy of the social sciences to social theory to substantive issues in civil and the public sphere. He is co-author with G. Delanty of Nationalism and Social Theory (Sage, 2002), and Rethinking Irish History: Nationalism, Identity and Ideology (Macmillan, 2001). He is also editor with Kieran Keohane of Irish Environmental Poltics after the Communicative Turn (Manchester University Press) and is currently writing The Contemporary Theory of the Public Sphere (Peter Lang).

Joel Walmsley (Philosophy UCC) is a specialist in philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and cognitive science. His recent publications include Mind: A Historical and Philosophical Introduction to the Major Theories (Hackett, 2006) and his current research interests focus on the use of dynamical systems theory in cognitive science, the concept of explanation, and emergent properties.

Agnes Czajka is Assistant Professor at the American University of Cairo. Her areas of interest include contemporary social and political thought, continental political philosophy, and critical citizenship and refugee studies. Specifically, she is interested in the intersections between ethico-normative interpretations of Europe and Europeanisation and the politics of refugee-ness; refugee politics in the Middle East and on the peripheries of Europe; intersections between discourses of the nation-state and refugee politics; and the relationship between the political and the ethical.

Carmel Hannan Lecturer in Sociology at University of Limerick, has worked for many years as a social researcher: At the Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex (1996-1999) - at the Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin (1999-2001) - at the University of Oxford (2001-2006) where she taught a graduate course on research methods (2004-2006). Her research has covered a diverse range of topics such as friendship, social networks and unemployment duration, subject choice in schools, policy evaluation and more recently, changes in family formation in Ireland.

Anders Petersen is Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology & Social Work and the Centre for Philosophy of Science Studies at Aalborg University, Denmark, and currently President of the Danish Sociological Association. His research & publication interests are in the field of the social pathologies of contemporary civilization, especially the topic of depression and related phenomena associated with the transformation of subjectivity and social action associated with the new spirit of capitalism and individual and collective existential conditions of neoliberal globalization.

Arpad Szakolczai Professor of Sociology at UCC is a social theorist who has published widely on Reflexive Historical Sociology, the intellectual lineages of Nietzsche, Weber, and Foucault; Sociology of Religion, Sociology of Art; Sociology of the Renaissance; the Genesis of Modernity and Crises of Civilization. He is establishing and developing a new disciplinary field of inquiry and research represented by the journal International Political Anthropology. He is currently completing a book on the Genealogy of the Public Sphere.

Kieran Bonner is Professor of Sociology at University of Waterloo, Canada. He is the author of A Great Place to Raise Kids: Interpretation, Science and the Urban-Rural Debate Montreal; McGill-Queens UP 1999, and Power and Parenting: A Hermeneutic of the Human Condition London: Macmillan 1998.  His essays have been published in Human Studies, the Canadian and the Irish Journals of Sociology. He is Researcher in Culture of Cities and The Grey Zone in Health & Illness, funded by the Social Sciences Research Council of Canada.

Piet Strydom is a Critical Theorist who has published many articles on social theory and the philosophy of social science in anthologies and in such journals as Telos, Political Studies, Theory, Culture & Society, Philosophy and Social Criticism, European Journal of Social Theory, Current Sociology and Sociological Theory, books he has published include Discourse and Knowledge (2000), Risk, Environment and Society (2002) Contemporary Critical Theory and Methodology London: Routledge (2011). He is Associate Editor of the European Journal of Social Theory and is currently writing a book on critical pragmatic cognitive sociology.

J. P. (Paddy) O’Carroll is a sociologist who has published widely on Irish community and political culture. His numerous articles range across divers topics that have been at the centre of political controversy, including  divorce referenda, national festivals and rituals of commemoration, the charisma of deValera, blood transfusion and the gift relation, power brokering, influence peddling, and local political style, partnership and policy making processes. He is presently writing an Anthropology of Community through the lens of the novelist John McGahern  

Tony O’Conner is a specialist in Continental philosophy, particularly phenomenology hermeneutics, and aesthetics. He has published widely in these fields. He has been Head of Philosophy at UCC, President of the British Society for Phenomenology, Chairman (1996-1999) and Secretary (1992-1995) of the National Committee for Philosophy, Royal Irish Academy and a member of the Executive Committee of  the Society for European Philosophy, the International Association for Philosophy and Literature, the Irish Philosophical Society, and the Philadelphia Association, London. He is on the Editorial Advisory Board of the book series Continental Philosophy, published by Routledge

Lilian O'Brien (B.A., M.A. UCC; PhD Brown University RI, USA) is a Lecturer in Philosophy at University College Cork, having previously been Visiting Assistant Professor at Vassar College in New York and Assistant Professor at The College of William and Mary in Virginia. Her research and publications are focused on the philosophy of causality, action, agency and intentionality. She is the author of The Philosophy of Action (UK: Palgrave-McMillan (2013).