Dr Andrea Mura
Honorary Research Fellow
Personal Details
| E-mail: | a.mura@abdn.ac.uk |
Biography
Department of Politics and International Relations
University of Aberdeen
Edward Wright Building
Dunbar St., Aberdeen AB24 3QY
E-mail: a.mura@abdn.ac.uk
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Andrea Mura
Oecumene Project
www.oecumene.eu
The Open University
Faculty of Social Sciences
Walton Hall
Milton Keynes MK7 6AA
E-mail: andrea.mura@open.ac.uk
Andrea Mura is a Research Associate on the Oecumene: Citizenship after orientalism ERC funded project (Open University).
He also collaborates with the University of Aberdeen where he acts as a contributing member of the Centre for Modern Thought, and Honorary Research Fellow at the Department of Politics and International Relations. He is an active participant in the research team of the 'Interdisciplinary Approaches to Violence' (IDAV) programme.
He has degrees in philosophy from the University Loughborough (PhD), the University of Exeter (MA), the University of Rome III (MSc), and has received clinical training in psychoanalysis at the Centre of Freudian Analysis and Research in London and the New Lacanian School in Rome. Vocational qualifications include also diplomas in Arabic language and culture at the University of Exeter and the Italian Institute of African and Oriental Studies (IsIAO).
Research Interests
His research interests lie in the intersection between Psychoanalysis and Philosophy, with particular attention to the psychoanalytical factors accounting for the force and longevity of ideological identifications.
His research has particularly focused on the ‘critical’ dimension of globalisation as a traumatic process of dislocation of ‘modern’ social space allowing for the emergence of a ‘transmodern’ symbolic scenario.
This interest has been accompanied by a cross-cultural examination of the way notions of modernity and high modernity have been developed in the Islamic arena, leading to distinct articulations of forms of sovereignty, community and territoriality.
He has published articles in international academic journals such as Journal of Political Ideologies, European Journal of Psychoanalysis, Language and Psychoanalysis, European Urban and Regional Studies, etc., and has contributed to several edited volumes, including the 2010 Routledge Handbook of Religion and Politics. He is currently producing a major study, The Symbolic Scenarios of Islam - Universalism versus Nationhood.
Current Research
Current research include:
(i) Orientalism at the Mirror: The Ambiguities of the European
This project is carried out as part of the 'Oecumene: Citizenship after orientalism' ERC funded project, and is an inquiry into the tension between citizenship and orientalism from a psychoanalytical perspective. It examines two discursive devices, 'Asiatic despotism' and 'debt', which have been central in organising political subjectivities in Europe and the geopolitical threshold of Orientness. The aim is to expose the ambiguities of the European (self, citizen, 'other') in different contexts, highlighting the symbolic instability of Europe's self-representation.
(ii) When Conflict Melts into Air – A Critical Study of Violence
In the framework of the ‘Interdisciplinary Approaches to Violence’ (IDAV) programme, Andrea is currently pursuing a psychoanalytical study of ‘violence’ asking whether Lacanian theory upsets traditional meanings of this category and if so, to what effect. Part of the inquiry asks whether a post-ideological world, while entailing a de-mobilisation of conflict (the multicultural idea of a peaceful global order ‘with each part in its allocated place’), has de facto promoted un-symbolisable violence. Outbursts in French banlieus (2005), riots in the UK (2011), and other events are examined so as to provide a psychoanalytical re-conceptualisation of this central analytical category.
Collaborations
External responsibilities include a position as Fellow at the European Centre for International Affairs (ECIA), Belgium, and Research Associate for the ERC funded project Oecumene: Citizenship after orientalism, (Open University), London.
Teaching Responsibilities
His teaching activities cover mainly the history of Western political thought, critical theory, and psychoanalysis, ideology and discourse analysis; He also has teaching background in Middle Eastern Studies and is currently teaching courses in the areas of Political Theory and Critical Human Rights Studies.