I was born in Drogheda, grew up in Dublin and live in the nearby hills. My tertiary education was in University College Dublin and The University of Essex. My interests include reading, academic writing, hill walking, cutting and seasoning wood and using it in our stove and DIY jobs more generally. My favorite book on the value and enjoyment of hands-on work has to be Matthew Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft. I first became interested in philosophy through reading Camus, Dostoevsky, Eliot and Solzhenitsyn, and inspiring lecturers in UCD and Essex did the rest. In broad terms my interests are contemporary European philosophy and the history of philosophy. My research areas have included phenomenology, the philosophy of subjectivity and deconstruction, with particular reference to Heidegger and Derrida. In more recent times I have become especially engaged by Husserl and Merleau-Ponty and the philosophies of embodied perception that they continue to inspire. Together with Dermot Moran I edited The Phenomenology Reader. Our aim was to make accessible to the English-Speaking world a representative selection of translations of primary readings of the phenomenological tradition. This book constitutes the most comprehensive collection of primary texts from in this philosophical tradition that has been published to date. In presenting many of the core ideas expounded by the great phenomenologists themselves, it provides a first-hand account of the birth, consolidation and evolution of the movement.My monograph on Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception brings out the Kantian and Husserlian contributions to his great work. My main aim, however is to show that his idea of the body schema with its motor intentional predelineations lies at the core of his theory of perception. This is fully compatible with his view that, as agents, we are at one with the bodies expressing our agency. With remarkable acuity he foregrounds the ways that consciousness shines through the lived body, which in repose as well as movement is most closely comparable to a work of art. Read more about this authorRead less about this author