Dr Ansgar Allen
School of Education
PhD Programme Director
Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
+44 114 222 8085
Full contact details
School of Education
The Wave
2 Whitham Road
Sheffield
S10 2AH
- Research interests
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Based on the idea that academic form restricts (and is often in ironic relation to) academic content, my writing experiments with style, ranging from more standard academic tropes to the fictive and fragmentary.
As well as the usual research outputs (peer-reviewed papers), I have written three academic books (Benign Violence, 2014, Palgrave MacMillan; The Cynical Educator, 2017, Mayfly Books; Cynicism, 2020, MIT Press), co-written a textbook (Education and Philosophy, 2017, SAGE), and have published several novels and experimental texts (see below, but also The Reaches, 2020, Schism Neuronics), as well as a range of book chapters, reviews, encyclopaedia entries, blogs, and media articles listed here.
Research interests include the role of ancient Cynicism as an ‘educational philosophy’, the function of contemporary cynicism in education, and the construction of the Western educated subject.
My research traces the development of educational subjectivities, including the history of our commitment to the supposed inherent value of education and the importance of being ‘educated’. In my writing and teaching, I study the unquestionable goods of education, remaining open to the possibility that education in all its forms (even where it appears most benign) is a form of violence.
Current research projectsInterrogating education through fiction
This is an ongoing project in which educational ideas are encountered and explored in the contexts of theoretically driven literary fiction. The object of critique is typically at the intersection of pedagogy (the teaching of dependent personalities) and andragogy (the self-cultivation of adults in educated society).
These fictions include a foray into the darker side of educational relations in The Sick List (2021, Boiler House Press), pursuit of the idea that education might function as an intoxicant in The Wake and the Manuscript (2022, Anti-Oedipus Press), an exploration of the continued influence of priestly ideas in secular contexts in Black Vellum (2023, Schism2), and interrogation of some of the institutions that anchor educated culture, such as museums in Plague Theatre (2022, Equus Press), and the institution of the library in The Sick List. Other texts include a re-enactment of the destruction of humanist culture in Burton's Anatomy (2022, Schism Neuronics), a satire in part of the promise of liberation by reading in The Reading Room (2021, Schism Neuronics), and an exploration of the limits of research in the dystopian novella Wretch (2020, Schism Neuronics).
- Publications
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Books
- Cynicism. MIT Press.
- Education and Philosophy: An Introduction. SAGE Publications.
- The Cynical Educator. Leicester: Mayfly. View this article in WRRO
- Benign Violence: Education in and Beyond the Age of Reason. Palgrave Macmillan.
Journal articles
- Decapitation theory and university management: some notes towards the derangement of academic life. Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization. View this article in WRRO
- Bataille and the poverty of academic form. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 43(2), 127-140. View this article in WRRO
- The death of thought: Reading Bataille in the ruins of a university. Research in Education. View this article in WRRO
- Roland Barthes and the death of the teacher. Oxford Review of Education. View this article in WRRO
- Barthes, anti-intellectualism, and the academy. Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization. View this article in WRRO
- Regimes of motherhood : social class, the word gap, and the optimisation of mothers' talk. Sociological Review, 70(6), 1181-1198. View this article in WRRO
- Bartleby is dead : inverting common readings of Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener. Angelaki, 24(5), 61-72. View this article in WRRO
- The culture of education: Ancient cynicism and 'the scandal of the truth'. Materiali Foucaultiani, 7(13-14), 75-92. View this article in WRRO
- Beckett and the plight of the educator. Other Education, 7(2), 88-96. View this article in WRRO
- The economic problem of masochism in education. Confero, 6(1). View this article in WRRO
- The end of education? Nietzsche, Foucault, Genealogy. Philosophical Inquiry in Education, 25(1), 47-65. View this article in WRRO
- Awaiting Education: Friedrich Nietzsche On the Future of Our Educational Institutions. Philosophical Inquiry in Education, 24(3), 197-210.
- Education, Mastery and the Marquis de Sade. Other Education, 2, 39-55.
- Out of weakness: the ‘educational good’ in late antiquity. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 24(2), 239-254. View this article in WRRO
- The Cynical Educator. Other Education: The Journal of Educational Alternatives, 4(1), 4-15.
- The domestication of Foucault: Government, critique, war. History of the Human Sciences, 27(5), 26-53. View this article in WRRO
- Radicalism, Education and Political Practice. Power and Education, 5(3), 262-267.
- The Examined Life. American Educational Research Journal, 50(2), 216-250.
- Editorial: Radicalism, Education and Political Practice. Power and Education, 3(5), 262-267.
- Cultivating the myopic learner: the shared project of high-stakes and low-stakes assessment. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 33(5), 641-659.
- Life without the 'x' factor - meritocracy past and present. Power and Education, 1(4), 4-19.
- Michael Young's The Rise of the Meritocracy: A Philosophical Critique. British Journal of Educational Studies, 59(4), 367-382.
- The idea of a world university: Can Foucauldian research offer a vision of educational futures?. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 19(3), 367-383.
- The Foucauldian Peacekeeper: on the dispersion of power and the futility of change. Power and Education, 3(5), 226-237.
- Towards an experimental education criticism: eleven notes in place of a manifesto. CounterText. View this article in WRRO
Chapters
- Psychology and Education: Unquestionable Goods In Tony Williams , Tom Billington , Dan Goodley & Tim Corcoran (Ed.), Critical Educational Psychology (pp. 16-25). Chichester: Wiley.
- The Idea of a World University In Murphy M (Ed.), Social Theory and Educational Research, volume 4: Governance and Management: Performativity, audit cultures and accountability (pp. 23-38). London: SAGE.
Book reviews
- Forms of education: rethinking educational experience against and outside the humanist legacy. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 44(1), 162-172.
- Raising people. Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 30(4), 613-616. View this article in WRRO
- The experience of education in Anglo-Saxon literature. British Journal of Educational Studies, 67(3), 411-413.
- Against Meritocracy: culture, power and myths of mobility. British Journal of Educational Studies, 66(2), 284-285.
- Happiness, hope and despair: Rethinking the role of education. POLICY FUTURES IN EDUCATION, 15(6), 803-804.
- Against Value in the Arts and Education. View this article in WRRO
- Book Review: A Companion to Foucault. Journal of Philosophy of Education (online reviews).
- Confucius, the analects and western education. BRITISH EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH JOURNAL, 40(5), 908-909.
- Ideas of education: philosophy and politics from Plato to Dewey.. British Journal of Educational Studies, 62(3), 355-357.
- Meritocratic education and social worthlessness. BRITISH JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL STUDIES, 62(2), 225-226.
- The Cambridge Introduction to Michel Foucault. Power and Education, 3(1).
- Why Foucault? Review Essay. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 315-320.
Dictionary/encyclopaedia entries
- Schooling. In The SAGE Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood Studies SAGE Publications . View this article in WRRO
- Meritocracy. In Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory Springer Singapore.
- Michel Foucault. In Encyclopedia of Educational Theory and Philosophy SAGE Publishing. View this article in WRRO
- Cynicism. MIT Press.
- Teaching activities
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I teach across a range of programmes in the School of Education, in areas including history and philosophy of education, continental philosophy, educational and social theory, educational politics, childhood studies, academic writing and research methodology.
I welcome applications to study for doctoral research degrees, in particular from those wishing to undertake research in the areas of educational philosophy, history and theory, and for students wishing to embark upon a PhD by Practice in the areas of creative-critical writing and theory-fiction.
- Professional activities and memberships
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Editorial and professional roles:
- Co-editor of Risking Education, an imprint of Punctum Books
- Pedagogy, Culture and Society Editorial Board Member and Book Reviews Editor
- Power and Education Editorial Board Member
- Other Education Editorial Board Member
- antae Advisory Board Member
- PESGB Branch Secretary
- PESGB Large Grants committee member (2016-18)
- Docent in Philosophy of Education, University of Helsinki
- External Examiner, MA in Philosophy of Education, University of Winchester
In addition to the conference circuit (in the areas of education, utopian studies and literary theory), I have been invited to participate in discussion and speak in a range of academic and non-academic contexts, including the World Forum for Democracy (Strasbourg, France), the International Conference on Reimagining Schooling (Thessaloniki, Greece), the Society for the History of Children and Youth (London, Canada), the Qingshan Education Bureau (Wuhan, China), the German-British Association (Berlin, Germany), the European Network on Neoliberal Education Policy (York, UK), ESRI (Manchester, UK), the Social Theory Group (Manchester, UK), various PESGB seminars across the UK, and the Sheffield Education Collective.