Bartholomew Ryan is a philosophy research fellow at the NOVA Institute of Philosophy (IFILNOVA) at the NOVA University Lisbon. He was the coordinator of CultureLab at IFILNOVA in 2017-2022. His academic and creative works orbit around the central motif of ‘transformation’ and the plurality of the subject which takes into account the masks, ecologies, journeys and (multiple) identities that define the modern human condition and ecological being.
Amongst his various publications, he is the author of Kierkegaard’s Indirect Politics: Interludes with Lukács, Schmitt, Benjamin and Adorno (Brill/Rodopi, 2014); and he has co-edited four books: Fernando Pessoa and Philosophy: Countless Lives Inhabit Us (with Antonio Cardiello and Giovanbattista Tusa, Rowman & Littlefield, 2021), Faces of the Self: Autobiography, Confession, Therapy (with Marta Faustino and Gianfranco Ferraro, Vendaval, 2019), Nietzsche and Pessoa: Ensaios (with Marta Faustino and Antonio Cardiello, Tinta-da-China, 2016), and Nietzsche and the Problem of Subjectivity (with João Constâncio and Maria João Mayer Branco, De Gruyter, 2015). He has also published various articles on the theatre of the self linking philosophy and literature, focusing especially on writers such as Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Pessoa and Joyce. He is the coordinator of the research group ‘Forms of Life and Practices of Philosophy’ and is an integrated member of the ‘Philosophy and Literature’ and ‘Lisbon Nietzsche Group’ at CultureLab; and is a team member of the project ‘Nietzsche and Nihilism and the Value of Art’ (2018-2022), ‘Fragmentation and Reconfiguration: experiencing the city between art and philosophy’ (2018-2022), and ‘HyperNietzsche’ (2017-). He was awarded the FCT Exploratory Grant (2014-2015) for the project ‘The Plurality of the Subject in Nietzsche and Pessoa’ in which he was the project leader. He was an active member of ‘Experimentation and Dissidence’ Research Project (2017-2019) at the Centre of Philosophy at the University of Lisbon.
He currently teaches a Masters programme in Philosophy under the theme ‘Art and Experience’ at Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, with courses such as ‘Ecological Thought in Philosophy and Art’ (2020-2022); and ‘Plurality, Paralysis and Revolution in the Theatre of the Self’ (2018-2019). He was a lecturer at Bard College Berlin for four years, and has also taught at universities in Brazil, Oxford, Aarhus, Dublin and Bishkek. He is currently writing a monograph on James Joyce and philosophy. He co-wrote and performed a play on the various inner and outer journeys of human rights activist and revolutionary Roger Casement, and is now completing a book on the subject. In addition, in 2022, Ryan released a solo album called ‘Jabuti’ under the name Loafing Hero; he leads the international music project The Loafing Heroes, releasing a sixth album – ‘meandertales’ in 2019; and is also part of the three-piece experimental audio formation called Headfoot.
