emile bojesen

Emile Bojesen currently works as Professor of Philosophy and Education and Director of Research and Innovation at the University of Winchester. He received the Vice-Chancellor's Leadership Award at graduation in 2019, set up and ran the MA Philosophy of Education between 2015-18, and was the University's Skills Development Manager for PGR students and supervisors between 2013-2015. He was awarded his PhD in the English department in 2010.

Bojesen's research has been directed towards analysing the basic tenets of the humanist legacy in education, examining its contradictions and limits, as well as the extent of its capture of educational thought. He is interested in forms of education that exceed imposed authorities and prescriptions, particularly those which can be understood as conversational, collaborative, or passive. His current research trajectory navigates the seeming contradiction arising between quasi-prescriptive pedagogies directed towards unlearning already accumulated education and its associated cultural dispositions, and a desire for a more 'passive' experience of education without any prescribed process. This research builds on his educationally oriented readings of Maurice Blanchot and Jean-François Lyotard, examining their reflections on music and reading them alongside the divergent approaches and sensibilities of the prominent C20th composers and educators, John Cage and Pierre Schaeffer.

He has published widely in the field of educational and philosophical thought, in journals such as Educational Philosophy and Theory, Ethics and Education, Pedagogy, Culture and Society, Studies in Philosophy and Education, Angelaki, Journal of Philosophy of Education and Philosophy Today and has chapters in several edited books, as well as a recent monograph, Forms of Education: Rethinking Educational Experience Against and Outside the Humanist Legacy (Routledge, 2020). He has also guest edited five special issues of scholarly journals and the book, Against Value in the Arts and Education (Rowman and Littlefield, 2016), with Sam Ladkin and Bob McKay. Bojesen is on the editorial boards of Studies in Philosophy and Education and Policy Futures in Education, and has peer reviewed for more than a dozen scholarly journals. He co-edits the creative and critical practice journal, The Educator.

His work was the subject of Fordham University’s (NY, USA) Francophone Philosophy Reading Group Spring Term 2019 and he was invited to Fordham at the end of the term. He has also recently given an invited lecture for the Gender Studies department at the Central European University in Budapest in March 2020. Bojesen has also been an invited speaker at more than fiften events, including at UCL, KCL, University of Sheffield, and Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance. He is co-director of a forthcoming book series for Punctum Books, Risking Education.

Alongside his philsophical and historical research, Bojesen conducts research through compositional practice, comprising of collaborations, experiments, and improvisations in sound. He has recently released recordings on labels such as Line Imprint, Geräuschmanufaktur, and Outsider Art, as well as on the label, Hoopoe Industries, that he runs with Ansgar Allen.