About — Conor Heaney

‘“Good Decisions” and Cultural Techniques: Vismann and Simondon’. [Paper presented at Cultural Techniques of Law.] University of Helsinki, Finland, January 2024 (with Connal Parsley)

‘Technē, Prefiguration, and Design in Bernard Stiegler’. [Paper presented at the Budapest Workshop on Philosophy and Technology]. Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary, November-December 2023

‘Technics, Law, and Decisions: An Organological Approach to Decision-Making’. [Paper presented at Technopolitics: Charting the Unknown, part of panel “Artificial Intelligence, Law and Ethics”]. University of Coimbra, Portugal, February 2023

‘Organology of Legal Judgment’. [Paper presented at Critical Legal Conference, part of panel “Speculative Data Ecologies”]. University of Tromsø, the Arctic University of Norway, August-September 2022

‘Technics, Law and Justice in Stiegler’. [Paper presented at Law, Technology and the Human, part of a panel “Senses of Law in Stiegler” (panel co-organised with Ben Turner)]. University of Kent, Canterbury, April 2022

‘Rhythms of Everyday Life in Plato’s Laws’, [Invited presentation at The Art of Everyday Life Seminar Series, Centre for Media Research.] Ulster University, Jan 2022

‘Rhythm, Reason, & Spirit: Rhythmanalytical Notes on Augustine and Whitehead’. Conference paper presented at the 12th International Whitehead Conference, part of a panel on Whitehead, Continental Philosophy, and Theology.] University of Brasília, August 2019.

‘Stupidity and Study in the Contemporary University’. [Centre for Critical Thought Postgraduate Seminar Series.] University of Kent, Canterbury, October 2017

'Fuck Excellence: Constructing a Joyous Pedagogy'. [Intervention at Joyful Ontologies, hosted by the Social Theory Centre and the Warwick Performance and Politics Network.] University of Warwick, September 2016 (with Hollie Mackenzie).

'Learning, Exchange, and Play III'. [Full day workplayshop event.] University of Kent, Canterbury, September 2016 (with Hollie Mackenzie).

''Change Life! Change Society! These precepts mean nothing without the production of an appropriate space' (Henri Lefebvre)' [Short invitation presented at Rediscovering the Radical: Theatre and Social Change, hosted by Collective Encounters and the Department of Applied Theatre at the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts with Unity Theatre.] Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts, September 2016.

'What's Your Story?' [Alternative learning space installed at Gregynog Ideas Lab V Summer School. Part of seminar series on '(Un)making the Neoliberal Subject'.] Newtown, Wales, July 2016 (with Phil Gaydon and Erzsébet Strausz).

'Ontologies of Transformation: Three Articulations of Creative Practice' [Conference paper presented at Critical Edge Alliance (CEA) Conference Innovative and Critical Approaches to Higher Education in the 21st Century. Part of panel on 'Rethinking Progressive Education in a Neoliberal World'.] Roskilde University, June 2016 (with Erzsébet Strausz and Joel Lazarus).

'Popular Culture as Pedagogy: Breaking Bad, Neoliberalism, and Freedom' [Conference paper presented at the European Workshops in International Studies (EWIS) hosted by the European International Studies Association. Part of panel stream 'Popular Culture and World Politics: Time, Identity, Effect, Affect'.] University of Tübingen, April 2016 (with Conor Crummey).

'The Classroom as a Space of Encounters: Doing Pedagogy Differently' [Conference paper and film screening. Presented at Undisciplined Environments: International Conference of the European Network of Political Ecology, hosted by ENTITLE. Part of panel on 'The Affective in Political Ecologies: Arts as Ways to Cultivate Resistances'.] Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, March 2016 (with Hollie Mackenzie).

'Learning, Exchange, and Play II' [Conference long installation organised for Transforming Moments: Dissonance, Liminality and Action as Learning Experiences.] University of Kent, Canterbury, January 2016 (with Hollie Mackenzie).

'Towards a Deleuzian Onto-Pedagogy of Difference' [Conference paper and film screening. Presented at Social Class in the 21st Century, hosted by the Amsterdam Centre for Globalisation Studies. Part of panel on 'The Neoliberal University: Gender, Class & Sexuality'.] University of Amsterdam, October 2015 (with Hollie Mackenzie).

'Learning, Exchange and Play: Practicing a Deleuzian Pedagogy' [Workshop organised for Techniques of Art and Protest, hosted by the PLANK Research Network.] King's College London, September 2015 (with Hollie Mackenzie and Dr Iain MacKenzie).

'Rethinking Reciprocity' [Conference paper presented at the Warwick Graduate Conference in Legal and Political Theory. Part of panel on 'Global Justice'.] University of Warwick, February 2015.

'The Academic, Ethics, and Power' [Conference paper presented at Engaging Foucault, hosted by the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory. Panel on 'Refiguring the Intellectual'.] University of Belgrade, December 2014.

'What is the University today? A Genealogy and Critique' [Conference paper presented at Protest, hosted by the Glasgow College of Arts. Panel on 'Youth in Revolt'.] University of Glasgow, May 2014.

I am currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Kent Law School at the University of Kent, Canterbury, working with Dr Connal Parsley on his UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowship (FLF) project: 'The Future of Good Decisions: An Evolutionary Approach to Human-AI Government Administrative Decision-Making’.

I am an early career researcher with particular interests and expertise in the following:

Political and legal theory
French theory and Continental Philosophy (e.g. Foucault, Deleuze, Guattari, and Stiegler)
Rhythmanalysis & rhythmology
Philosophy of technology
Process philosophy & philosophy of time
Critical university studies
Critical and experimental pedagogy + pedagogical theory
Aesthetics

Prior to this (in 2021-23), I was a Lecturer in Legal Theory / Law & Society in the Law School at the University of Strathclyde (where I am also currently a Visiting Researcher), and taught on legal theory, philosophy, legal methods, and supervised research projects. In 2020-21, I was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Department of Liberal Arts, King’s College London and was a Tutor as part of the “Brilliant Tutoring Programme” for the Brilliant Club, teaching KS3 English virtually as part of the National Tutoring Programme set up to support the national catch up effort caused by school closures in 2020.

Between January 2019 - August 2020, I was a Lecturer in Liberal Arts & Politics Education in the Liberal Arts Department at King’s College London. I convened and taught on “Politics in Theory and Practice” (within the Department of Political Economy), convened the second year Liberal Arts core module “Space, Power, Agency”, and lectured/took seminars for the third year core module “Translation Across Disciplines.” I was also the Major Advisor for the Politics pathway.

I completed my PhD in Social & Political Thought at the University of Kent, Canterbury, where I held a Kent 50th Anniversary Scholarship (2015-2018). My thesis was entitle Rhythmic Ecology: Mindscaping the Rhythms of Everyday Life, and was supervised by Dr Iain MacKenzie and Dr Charles Devellennes. I submitted my thesis in September 2018 and am passed my viva with no corrections on 1st March 2019, graduating in July 2019. During my time as both a Graduate Teaching Assistant and Assistant Lecturer at the University of Kent (Sept 2018 - Dec 2018), I taught on modules in political thought across all levels (“Introduction to Political Thought” and “Modern Political Thought”). I also developed original, research-led lecture and module content for the Liberal Arts program on Neoliberalism (for the module “Understanding the Contemporary”) and The Postmodern and the Postindustrial (for the module “Roots of Transformation”).

My PhD was conducted as an experiment in formulating a new methodological approach to rhythmanalysis as a way to articulate responses to ontological, methodological, and epistemological questions in a process-oriented fashion, but in a manner with direct relevance with how we might conceive of new experimental forms of politics that do not seek closure and finalism, but rather seek to remain constitutively open. This PhD is also intended as a contribution to re-engaging with Félix Guattari’s later work, particularly The Three Ecologies and Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm, in order to think about what a contemporary “ecosophical” approach attuned to the challenges of contemporary digital technologies approach might look like. One of the central thematics of the thesis was the relationship between contemporary capitalism and mental health - the mental environment or mental ecology - as well as the question of how it might be transformed.

I hold a Postgraduate Diploma in Law (PGDL) from BPP University. I also received an MPhil in Philosophy from the University of Warwick - where I specialised in political philosophy, 20th century Continental philosophy, and the phenomenological tradition - and where I held an AHRC Research Masters Preparation Scholarship (2013-2015). My thesis was supervised by Professor Keith Ansell-Pearson and was titled An Empiricist Mode of Existence: Deleuze, the 'New Materialisms', & an Art of Organising Encounters. Prior to this, I received a BA in Politics, Philosophy & Economics from Queen's University Belfast (2010-2013).