Bartholomew Ryan
Appointed Research Fellow

Bartholomew Ryan is a philosophy research fellow at the NOVA Institute of Philosophy (IFILNOVA) at NOVA University Lisbon, where he is also an invited lecturer at the Department of Philosophy teaching a Masters course on ‘Art and Experience’. He is currently the coordinator of the research group ‘Forms of Life and Practices of Philosophy’, and was coordinator of CultureLab at IFILNOVA from 2017 to 2022. He is also a member of ‘Philosophy and Literature’ and ‘Lisbon Nietzsche’ Research Groups at CultureLab. He is currently a team member of the FCT funded exploratory project “Mapping Philosophy as a Way of Life: An Ancient Model, a Contemporary Approach” (2023- ). He was a lecturer at Bard College Berlin (2007-2011), and has taught at universities in Brazil, Croatia, Oxford, Aarhus, Dublin and Bishkek.

 

His academic and creative work orbits around the motif of ‘transformation’ and plurality of the subject which takes into account the multiple realities and identities that can construe the modern human condition and ecological being. He continues to write on the tension between philosophy and literature, modernism as a philosophical problem, the theatre of the self, and the ecological art of living and dying, with special interest in figures such as Kierkegaard, Pessoa, Joyce, Nietzsche and Roger Casement. His next two books as author are: Fernando Pessoa: Critical Lives (Reaktion Press, 2024) and James Joyce: The Unfolding Art of Flourishing and Decay (OUP, 2025). He is also the author of Kierkegaard’s Indirect Politics: Interludes with Lukács, Schmitt, Benjamin and Adorno (Brill/Rodopi, 2014). He has also co-edited four books, the most recent being: Fernando Pessoa and Philosophy: Countless Lives Inhabit Us (with Antonio Cardiello and Giovanbattista Tusa, Rowman & Littlefield, 2021).

 

In 2022, Ryan released a solo album called ‘Jabuti’ under the name Loafing Hero; and he leads the international music project The Loafing Heroes, releasing their sixth album ‘meandertales’ in 2019; and is also part of the experimental music project called Headfoot.

Publications
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books
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2025
CultureLab • books
James Joyce: The Philosophical Art of Flourishing and Decay
James Joyce: The Philosophical Art of Flourishing and Decay
Bartholomew Ryan
Oxford: Oxford University Press (forthcoming).
2024
CultureLab • books
Fernando Pessoa: Critical Lives
Fernando Pessoa: Critical Lives
Bartholomew Ryan
Londres: Reaktion Press (forthcoming).
2023
CultureLab • books
X-Centric Futures
X-Centric Futures
Bartholomew Ryan & Giovanbattista Tusa (Eds.)
(forthcoming)
book chapters
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2024
CultureLab • book chapters
Navigating Marx’s Collective Praxis and Kierkegaard’s Individual Practice in the Swarming-Dream City of Capitalism
Navigating Marx’s Collective Praxis and Kierkegaard’s Individual Practice in the Swarming-Dream City of Capitalism
Bartholomew Ryan
M.F. Molder, N. Conceição, N. Fonseca (Eds.) Rethinking the City: Reconfiguration and Fragmentation. Abingdon: Routledge (forthcoming).
2022
CultureLab • book chapters
‘Saindo da era da pecaminosidade absoluta’: A conversão de Georg Lukács
‘Saindo da era da pecaminosidade absoluta’: A conversão de Georg Lukács
Bartholomew Ryan
A. Caeiro & G. Ferraro (Eds.), Formas de Conversão: Filosofia, Política, Espiritualidade. Lisbon: Abysmo (forthcoming).
2021
CultureLab • book chapters
Also Spuke Zerothruster e the Bringer of Plurabilities: James Joyce e Friedrich Nietzsche
Also Spuke Zerothruster e the Bringer of Plurabilities: James Joyce e Friedrich Nietzsche
Bartholomew Ryan
M. J. M. Branco, & J. Constâncio (Eds.), Nietzsche e as Artes. Lisboa: Tinta-da-China (forthcoming).
2021
CultureLab • book chapters
Ecological-Artistic Interpenetrations on a Damaged Planet: Invoking James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake
Ecological-Artistic Interpenetrations on a Damaged Planet: Invoking James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake
Bartholomew Ryan
J. Miranda Justo, E. de Sousa & F. Silva (Eds.), Philosophy as Experimentation, Dissidence and Heterogeneity. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing (forthcoming).
2021
CultureLab • book chapters
Introduction: An Encounter between the Poet and the Philosopher
Introduction: An Encounter between the Poet and the Philosopher
Bartholomew Ryan
B. Ryan, A. Cardiello & G. Tusa (Eds.), Fernando Pessoa and Philosophy: Countless Lives Inhabit Us (pp. 13-38). Washington D.C.: Rowman & Littlefield.
2021
CultureLab • book chapters
Nietzsche e a cultura europeia
Nietzsche e a cultura europeia
Bartholomew Ryan
P. Gori (Ed.), Introdução a Friedrich Nietzsche. Lisboa: Tinta-da-China (forthcoming).
2019
CultureLab • book chapters
“O Tinteiro Assombradado”: Forjar um herói joyceano em Roger Casement
“O Tinteiro Assombradado”: Forjar um herói joyceano em Roger Casement
Bartholomew Ryan
G. Ferraro, M. Faustino, & B. Ryan (Eds.), Rostos do Si: Autobiografia, Confissão, Terapia. Lisboa: Vendaval.
2011
CultureLab • book chapters
Carl Schmitt: Zones of Exception and Appropriation
Carl Schmitt: Zones of Exception and Appropriation
Bartholomew Ryan
J. Stewart (Ed.), Kierkegaard's Influence on Social-Political Thought (pp. 177-208). Surrey: Ashgate Publishing.
2011
CultureLab • book chapters
Vigilantes of the Exception: Kierkegaard and Carl Schmitt
Vigilantes of the Exception: Kierkegaard and Carl Schmitt
Bartholomew Ryan
R. Králík et al (Eds.), V tieni Kierkegaarda / In the Shadow of Kierkegaard. Nitra: Central European Research Institute of Søren Kierkegaard, Constantine the Philosopher University / Toronto: Kierkegaard Circle, University of Toronto.
Articles in conference proceedings
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2013
CultureLab • Articles in conference proceedings
Kierkegaard’s Political Subversion
Kierkegaard’s Political Subversion
Bartholomew Ryan
The Uses and Abuses of Kierkegaard, Copenhagen Business School, October 14-18, 2013.
2013
CultureLab • Articles in conference proceedings
The Argonaut of Modernism: Exile, Multiplicity, and the Art of Loafing
The Argonaut of Modernism: Exile, Multiplicity, and the Art of Loafing
Bartholomew Ryan
The Traveller's Eye: Narrating Dis/Location in 20th Century Travel Literature, University of Bucharest, Romania, October 24th – 26th 2013.
2013
CultureLab • Articles in conference proceedings
Theatres of the Self with Kierkegaard & Fernando Pessoa
Theatres of the Self with Kierkegaard & Fernando Pessoa
Bartholomew Ryan
Reconsidering Kierkegaard in a Global World: Jubilee Congress, Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre, Copenhagen, May 6-8, 2013.
2012
CultureLab • Articles in conference proceedings
Carl Schmitt’s Intrusion on Hamlet
Carl Schmitt’s Intrusion on Hamlet
Bartholomew Ryan
Bard College Berlin, March 2012.