Dr Katrina Mitcheson

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About me

I am a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy. My research is rooted in 19th and 20th Century European thought, including the work of Nietzsche, Freud, Foucault and Ricoeur. I have also addressed intersections with Ancient philosophy, considering Nietzsche's relationship to Pyrronhian Scepticism and Foucault's connection to Stoicism. I am particularly interested in the contribution of these thinkers to theories of the self, in particular the self understood as constructed, understandings of philosophy as a way of life, and the problems and possibilities of self-cultivation. 


Many of my publications to date have explored how various techniques or technologies of the self in the work of Nietzsche, Freud and Foucault address problems of self-knowledge, self-cultivation and transformation, at the same time as addressing interpretative issues concerning their work. I have also published on the philosophy of photography, in Film Philosophy and on the philosophy of art. 

My most recent book Visual Art and Self-Construction (Edinburgh University Press), challenges the paradigm of narrative as a theory of self-construction and offers an alternative corporeal, and multiple account of the hermeneutics of the self drawing on the work of artists including Bourgeois, Sherman, Beuys, and Bacon. 

I continue to contribute to Nietzsche scholarship, most recently writing on Nietzsche's use of the metaphor of pregnancy and currently working on a guidebook on Dawn. I am currently President of the Friedrich Nietzsche Society. And have contributed to dicussions of Nietzsche's philosophy on BBC Radio Three's Free Thinking and The Listening Service.

I am theme leader of World, Meaning and Human Action which is part of the Social Science Research Group.

Area of expertise

My research specialisms are the history of European philosophy, particulalry Nietzsche, Foucault and Ricoeur, Philosophy as a Way of Life and the philosophy of art.

Publications

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