Kurt Borg

I am a Lecturer in the Department of Education Studies at the University of Malta. I completed a PhD in Philosophy at Staffordshire University in 2020, with a thesis on the ethics and politics of narrating trauma in medical and legal institutional contexts, drawing on the work of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler. I graduated with a BA (Hons) and an MA in Philosophy at the University of Malta, the latter with a dissertation on the relation between Foucault's ideas on power and ethics.

My research interests revolve around the interface between ethics and politics. I am interested in the history of ethics (especially ancient ethics) and ethical theory (ethics of care, vulnerability, relationality, embodiment and affect), as well as applied ethics and ethics education. I have a strong interest in Foucault's work, particularly his ideas on discourse, power relations, subjectivity and ethics. I draw on these ideas in my work on power relations in the context of education, psychology, medicine and disability studies. I am also interested in the philosophy of education, both its history and current debates in educational theory. While my main area of specialisation is contemporary continental philosophy, I adopt an interdisciplinary outlook that brings philosophy in dialogue with the social sciences. Towards this aim, I use philosophical inquiry in relation to approaches such as discourse and narrative analysis to study critical issues in education and narratives of illness, disability and trauma.

Owing to my passion for Foucault's work, particularly his late lectures on the hermeneutics, techniques and care of the self, I developed a strong interest in the idea and practice of philosophy as a way of life. Texts close to my heart, which I return to for and beyond academic purposes, are those of Epictetus, Aristotle, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Montaigne, Hadot and others written by those for whom to do philosophy is to learn how to live and die.