Book chapters:
| “Queer Inversions: When Orientation and Desire Remains Undecidable in Leyla Yilmaz’s Not Knowing [forthcoming] |
| Unbridled: Dragging Nudity in Ann Oren’s Piaffe.” In Animal Drag: Considering Power and Politics in Performing ‘Animality.’ Manchester Univeristy Press. [forthcoming] |
| “The Gift in Lube: Derrida, Foucault and Fisting.” In Erotic Discourses in Culture, History and the Arts. Routledge. [forthcoming] |
| “The Corps-à-corps of Queer Love”, Cinephile: The University of British Columbia’s Film Journal 19.1 (2025): 14-18. ISSN 1712-9265 |
| “(Non)Life on the Line: Crisis Calls with Animals”, Pulse: The Journal of Science and Culture, 10.1(2023): 1-17. ISSN 2416-111X |
| “Plastic Bits: Genitals and Sexual Plasticity”, tba: Journal of Art, Media and Visual Culture, 5.1 (2023): 68-79. ISSN: 2563-6243. |
| ‘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. |
| ‘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, 2025. |
| ‘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. |
| ‘Creature Cameos: Filming Who or What.’ Forms and Feelings of Kinship in the Contemporary World. University of Warwick, United Kingdom. Keynote speaker: Janet Carsten. 27 April, 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. |
| ‘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. |
| ‘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. |
| ‘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. |
| ‘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:
| “Sexes that Secrete”, Counterfield 2.1 (2023): pp. 64-68. |
| “Sticks, Stones & Supplanted Groans: The Offshoots of Sexual Difference in Ari Astar’s Midsommar”, Counterfield 1.1, (2020): pp. 42-45. |
| “Black Circle/Transparent Bodies”, co-written with Katya Krylova, The Ocean As Archive, 1.1 (2019): 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
Areas of interest include philosophies of sex and love, lubrication, sexual poetics, deconstruction, animalities, film studies, queer theory, feminist phenomenology, gender studies, critical approaches to space and time.
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 on the “Space and Time” module for the BA in History of Art at Goldsmiths. He also coordinates graduate programs and global research fellowships at New York University in London. Killian is a member of Counterfield, a PhD research collective associated with Goldsmith’s Visual Cultures.
Academic qualifications
Book Reviews:
Audio:
Peer Review:
Junctions: Graduate Journal of the Humanities (2025), tba: Journal of Art, Media, and Visual Culture (2025), Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image (2024).
Departmental, University and Community Engagements:
Honours, Awards and Research Grants:
Research
Areas of interest include philosophies of sex and love, lubrication, sexual poetics, deconstruction, animalities, film studies, queer theory, feminist phenomenology, gender studies, critical approaches to space and time.
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 on the “Space and Time” module for the BA in History of Art at Goldsmiths. He also coordinates graduate programs and global research fellowships at New York University in London. Killian is a member of Counterfield, a PhD research collective associated with Goldsmith’s Visual Cultures.
Academic qualifications
| PhD, Visual Cultures, Department of Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths University, London. [ongoing] |
| MA, Contemporary Art Theory, Department of Visual Culture, Goldsmiths University, London. 2017-19. |
| BA, Fine Art (Honors), Crawford College of Art & Design, Ireland. 2011-15. |
| “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, 7.2 (2024): 133-136 |
Audio:
| “Soundbites Vol I: Airways, Breathing, Circulation.” In series four: playful disruptions: loopholes, networks, care, Goldsmiths University London. 2021. |
Junctions: Graduate Journal of the Humanities (2025), tba: Journal of Art, Media, and Visual Culture (2025), Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image (2024).
Departmental, University and Community Engagements:
|
“Fanny Söderbäck: Jewish
and Black Waywardness: Narrating Afterlife Subjunctively.” Respondent. Goldsmiths University of London. 13 May, 2025. |
| Life After. Co-convenor. Visual Cultures Public Programme, Summer term. Speakers: Fanny Söderbäck, Patricia MacCormack, Boris Pantev and the Mental Health and Social Justice Network. Goldsmiths University of London. 2025. |
| Research and Knowledge Exchange Committee. PhD Student Representative. Goldsmiths University of London. 2024-25. |
| “Siôn Parkinson: Shit-Talker.” Respondent. Goldsmiths University of London. 20 November, 2024. |
| ‘What is Research Now?’ Panellist. ReSkIN, The Courtauld, London United Kingdom, 23 March, 2024. |
| MA in Contemporary Art Theory reading group. Facilitator. Goldsmiths University of London, United Kingdom, 5 October, 2023-25. |
| “Roaming.’” Speaker. The Ocean As Archive: Performance Night and Zine Launch. Tamesis Dock, London, United Kingdom. 2 May, 2019. |
Honours, Awards and Research Grants:
| Visual Cultures PhD Student Grant, Goldsmiths University, United Kingdom. 2023. |
| Goldsmiths Visual Cultures Student Fund, Goldsmiths University, United Kingdom. 2019. |
| 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. 2015. |