Rikus van Eeden

Rikus van Eeden (PhD KU Leuven 2024) is a philosopher by training. His research interests include twentieth century continental philosophy; particularly, philosophical anthropology, critical theory, and postcolonial thought. 

Lately, his research has increasingly focussed on “philosophical practices,” the pragmatic, habitual, and often overlooked things that philosophers do - archiving, translating, editing, teaching, performing, etc. - as well as the diversity of more marginal and mundane forms and genres in which they think - reviews, funding applications, anecdotes, notes, etc. He is interested in how, in these practices, often considered marginal to the actual ‘doing’ of philosophy, it sometimes appears to be most itself - a creative practice of generating new concepts - while, at the same time, being most unlike itself and shading into other practices.  

At CLIC he will be working on the AFROPRESS ERC project with Prof. Cedric Van Dijck. In this context, his research will investigate the auto-theorisation of the periodical, both discursive and formal - that is, how periodicals reflect on and shape their own role in broader intellectual culture.  His specific empirical research will be on periodicals in post-independence Uganda.