Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy - Formation and Early Years

Formation and Early Years

In January 2002, Cameron Shingleton, Jon Roffe, Matt Sharpe and David Rathbone ran a summer school with four courses (on Nietzsche, on Deleuze, on Zizek and on Hegel, respectively) in the 1888 Building at the University of Melbourne. Sharpe had just finished his PhD on Zizek with Marion Tapper and Jon Rundell at Melbourne; Rathbone had returned to Melbourne from studies with Agnes Heller and Reiner Schurmann at the New School for Social Research in New York; Shingleton had completed his honors degree on Nietzsche in the German department; and Roffe his, in French. All four were of the opinion that the formalities of institutional academia alone were not sufficient to undertaking philosophical and critical thought. They thus formed the MSCP in the spirit of a guild of philosophers with the intention of preserving and fostering genuine intellectual engagement with continental philosophy. In 2003, they were joined by Sean Ryan, Craig Barrie, and Ashley Woodward, and later, Esther Anatolitis, Felicity Joseph, Jack Reynolds, Kate Noble, Alex Murray, Atliana Saffich, Mark Tomlinson, Marc Hiatt, James Garrett, Bryan Cooke, Paul Daniels, Andrea Leon-Martino, and Sherah Bloor, all of whom have all been involved in various ways during the five years 2004-2009, running annual Summer and Winter Schools, as well as several conferences and research days.