Book chapters:
| 2026 |
“Queer Inversions: When Orientation and Desire Remains Undecidable in Leyla Yilmaz’s Not Knowing [forthcoming] |
| 2026 |
“Unbridled: Dragging Nudity in Ann Oren’s Piaffe.” In Animal Drag: Considering Power and Politics in Performing ‘Animality.’ Manchester Univeristy Press. [forthcoming] |
| 2026 |
“The Gift in Lube: Derrida, Foucault and Fisting” [forthcoming] |
| 2025 | “The Corps-à-corps of Queer Love”, Cinephile: The University of British Columbia’s Film Journal 19(1) [forthcoming] |
| 2023 | “(Non)Life on the Line: Crisis Calls with Animals”, Pulse: The Journal of Science and Culture, 10(1): 1-17. ISSN 2416-111X |
|
2023 |
“Plastic Bits: Genitals and Sexual Plasticity”, tba: Journal of Art, Media and Visual Culture, 5(1): 68-79. ISSN: 2563-6243. |
| 2025 | ‘The Corps-à-corps of Queer Love: Sex with Hegel and Derrida.’ Film-Philosophy 2025 Conference. Keynote speakers: Sandra Laugier, May Adadol Ingawanij and Walid El Khachab. Malta. 23-25 July 2025. [forthcoming] |
2025 | ‘Tongue-Ties: Auto-Affection in the Mouths of Hegel and Derrida.’ Feeling Cultures/Culturing Feelings: Emotions and Affects in Cultural Practice. Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland. 9-11 April. |
| 2024 | ‘Under the Skin: The Interval Between Sex and Meaning.’ Film-Philosophy 2024 Conference. Keynote speakers: Catherine Constable, João Mário Grilo and Homay King. Portugal. 1-3 July 2024. |
2024 |
‘Creature Cameos: Filming Who or What.’ Forms and Feelings of Kinship in the Contemporary World. University of Warwick, United Kingdom. Keynote speaker: Janet Carsten. |
|
2024 |
‘Against the Flow: When the Gift and Sexual Biopolitics Bleed Together.’ Leakage Inaugural Conference of STSinG. TU Dresden, Germany. Keynote speakers: Nerea Calvillo, Amade M’charek and Thao Phan. 19-22 March 2024. |
2023 |
‘Secret(e) Sex: Secretions that Supplant Shame.’ 5th Memory Guilt and Shame International Conference (online). Committee Speakers: Wojciech Owczarski and Ricardo Rato Rodrigues. 26-27 October 2023. |
|
2023 |
‘The Gift in Lube: Erotics of Facilitation.’ Sense and Sexuality: Erotic Discourses in/of History Conference. University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland. Keynote speaker: Clarissa Smith and Jana Funke. 22-23 September 2023. |
2023 |
‘Keeping (Revolutionary) Time: Conducting Political Counterpoints in Todd Field’s Tár.’ Film-Philosophy 2023 Conference. Keynote speakers: Vivian Sobchack, Akira Mizuta Lippit and Richard Rushton. Chapman University, United States. 13-15 June 2023. |
|
2023 |
‘A Revolutionary Metronome: Time and Sexual Politics’ Time and Its Influences, EGO Spring Conference. Indiana University of Pennsylvania, United States. 14-16 April 2023. |
Art Publications:
|
2024 |
“Sexes that Secrete”, Counterfield 2 (1), pp. 64-68. |
2020 |
“Sticks, Stones & Supplanted Groans: The Offshoots of Sexual Difference in Ari Astar’s Midsommar”, Counterfield 1(1), pp. 42-45. |
|
2019 |
“Black Circle/Transparent Bodies”, co-written with Katya Krylova, The Ocean As Archive, 1(1), pp. 6-9. |
Killian O’ Dwyer is an associate lecturer and PhD researcher in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. Killian’s research examines how and why sex comes to matter in art, literature and philosophy.
Research interests
Areas of interests include philosophies of sex and love, sexual poetics, lubrication, deconstruction, animalities, film, psychoanalysis, queer theory and critical trans-feminism. Killian’s current doctoral work represents a critical review of the question of sex since the introduction of the Hegelian dialectic, as a form of rationality that reduces the generosity of sexual differences into purely conceptual categories. Drawing extensively on the work of Jacques Derrida and Luce Irigaray, Killian argues that sex is a condition of life that cannot be represented as such or as yet; rather, it is the gradual and always incomplete actualisation of individual sexuate bodies in relation to one another, a ‘lubrication of difference’ that welcomes the undecidability and variability of sexes across biological and cultural contexts.
Teaching and university engagement
Killian teaches a module on questions of space and time in visual culture for the BA in History of Art at Goldsmiths, with a specific focus on philosophies of embodiment and sexuality since the Enlightenment. He also works in the Graduate School of Arts and Science for New York University, as well as for the univerisity’s Global Research Initiatives, where he coordinates graduate programmes and fellowships in London. He is also a member of Counterfield, a PhD research collective associated with Goldsmith’s Visual Cultures.
Academic qualifications
Book Reviews:
Audio:
Peer Review:
Departmental, University and Community Engagements:
Honours, Awards and Research Grants:
Research interests
Areas of interests include philosophies of sex and love, sexual poetics, lubrication, deconstruction, animalities, film, psychoanalysis, queer theory and critical trans-feminism. Killian’s current doctoral work represents a critical review of the question of sex since the introduction of the Hegelian dialectic, as a form of rationality that reduces the generosity of sexual differences into purely conceptual categories. Drawing extensively on the work of Jacques Derrida and Luce Irigaray, Killian argues that sex is a condition of life that cannot be represented as such or as yet; rather, it is the gradual and always incomplete actualisation of individual sexuate bodies in relation to one another, a ‘lubrication of difference’ that welcomes the undecidability and variability of sexes across biological and cultural contexts.
Teaching and university engagement
Killian teaches a module on questions of space and time in visual culture for the BA in History of Art at Goldsmiths, with a specific focus on philosophies of embodiment and sexuality since the Enlightenment. He also works in the Graduate School of Arts and Science for New York University, as well as for the univerisity’s Global Research Initiatives, where he coordinates graduate programmes and fellowships in London. He is also a member of Counterfield, a PhD research collective associated with Goldsmith’s Visual Cultures.
Academic qualifications
| 2019 / 2025 |
PhD,
Visual Cultures, Department of Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths University,
London. |
| 2017 / 2019 | MA,
Contemporary Art Theory, Department of Visual Culture, Goldsmiths University,
London. |
| 2011 / 2015 | BA, Fine Art (Honors), Crawford College of Art & Design, Ireland. |
|
2025 |
“Siôn Parkinson, Stinkhorn: How Nature’s Most Foul-Smelling Mushroom Can Change the Way We Listen (London: Sternberg Press, 2024)” Volupté: Interdisciplinary Journal of Decadence Studies [forthcoming]. |
Audio:
|
2026 |
“Tár and Revolutionary Time.” Moved By Images podcast [forthcoming]. |
| 2021 |
“Soundbites Vol I: Airways, Breathing, Circulation.” In series four: playful disruptions: loopholes, networks, care, Goldsmiths University London. |
| 2024 |
Cinema:
Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image. |
Departmental, University and Community Engagements:
| 2025 |
Visual Cultures Public Programme, Summer term. Co-convenor for Life After. Speakers: Fanny Söderbäck, Patricia MacCormack, Boris Pantev and the Mental Health and Social Justice Network. Goldsmiths University of London. |
|
2024-2025 |
Research and Knowledge Exchange Committee. PhD Student Representative. Goldsmiths University of London. |
|
2024 |
“Siôn Parkinson: Shit-Talker.” Respondent. Goldsmiths University of London. 20 November. |
|
2024 |
Speaker, ‘What is Research Now?’ ReSkIN, The Courtauld, London United Kingdom, 23 March 2024. |
2023 |
Facilitator, MA in Contemporary Art Theory reading group, Goldsmiths University of London, United Kingdom, 5 October 2023. |
|
2019 |
Speaker, ‘Roaming.’ The Ocean As Archive: Performance Night and Zine Launch. Tamesis Dock, London, United Kingdom. 2 May 2019. |
Honours, Awards and Research Grants:
2023 |
Visual Cultures PhD Student Grant, Goldsmiths University, United Kingdom. |
|
2019 |
Goldsmiths Visual Cultures Student Fund, Goldsmiths University, United Kingdom. |
2015 |
CIT Venice Biennale President Award, graduate travel bursary to Venice, Italy. |
|
2015 |
Graduate Residency Award with Backwater Artists Group, year-long studio residency, Ireland. |
| 2015 |
Crawford College Academic Thesis Award, Cork, Ireland. |