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Dr Hager Weslati

Kingston School of Art
Department of Journalism, Publishing and Media
School of Creative and Cultural Industries
Penrhyn Road

Course Leader MA Media & Communication

Email: [email protected]

About

I joined the Kingston School of Art in 2010. Before that, I taught Film and American studies at Lancaster University. I currently lead the MA in Media and Communication and deliver different aspects of the BA Media Content and Communication curriculum.

My teaching is focused on audio media content, video theory, strategic communication and advocacy.

I am editor-in-chief for the Journal for Cultural Research.

My research interests are in the broader field of psychoanalysis and the philosophy of information. My specialism in and contribution to Alexandre Kojève scholarship underpins my interest in archive and collection-based research, and in the analytic method of reconstructing knowledge systems.

Qualifications

PhD
FHEA
SFHEA

Domains

I teach on the Media Content and Communication BA audio-content with focus on short-form podcasting, the video essay as research-based creative practice, PR and advocacy. I lead and deliver the curriculum of the MA Media and Communication, contributing lectures and workshops on nation branding, media ecology, across media-portfolio modules.

Course director

Media and Communication MA

My primary research interest is in contemporary philosophy with a focus on the philosophy of information, psychoanalysis, and political communication. My current work explores the philosophical manuscripts and diplomatic papers of Alexandre Kojève. Past projects include studies on spatial ordering after the end of history, Kantian moral philosophy and the crisis in physics, the aesthetics of visual vacancy in film and contemporary art, and the role of women's travel writings in shaping modernist projects of transnational cultural governance.

Supervised PhD projects to successful completion include: "Amorocenic baroque: media technological complexification of romantic love" (Chaudhry, 2025); "Incompletion in the work of Alexandre Kojève" (Moore, 2025); "Framing Egyptian foreign policy" (Khalil, 2025); "Neither Devi nor Desh: gendered violence in Indian graphic novels" (Rajbongshi, 2024); "The psychoanalysis of Artificial Intelligence" (Millar, 2020); "What can one expect from psychoanalysis today" (Moutselou, 2020); "Beyond Partition: Post-Palestinian cinema" (White, 2019); "Twitter, gender and linguistic purism" (Al-Suwailem, 2017); "The intoxication of destruction: Georges Bataille's economy of expenditure and destruction in visual cultures" (Stapleton, 2014).

I currently supervise two PhD projects: "Disenchantment and technologies of the self on Little Red Book (Xiaohongshu, 小红书)" (Xiaoyu Pu), and "the psycho-geography of China's urban villages" (Xin Yo).

I welcome PhD proposals related or relevant to my areas of specialism.

Scholarly affiliations

Knowledge Exchange Research Institute (KERI) member, Design, Arts and Creative Practice

Publications

Kojève, Kant, and paganism

Weslati, Hager, 2025, Continental Philosophy Review (58), 4 pp 671-683, Published

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Critique of pure violence: Weil contra Kojeve

Weslati, Hager, 2024, Philosophical Journal of Conflict and Violence (8), 1 pp 46-62, Published

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Tyranny and boredom

Weslati, Hager, 2023, Journal for Cultural Research (27), 2 pp 172-188, Published

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«Предположив, что истина есть женщина» : КОнцеПтУАЛьные ПеРСОнАжи КОжеВА и иХ РОЛь В егО СиСтеме ЗнАния = "Supposing that truth is a woman": КОнцеПтУАЛьные ПеРСОнАжи КОжеВА и иХ РОЛь В егО СиСтеме ЗнАния = Kojève's conceptual characters and their role in his system of knowledge

Weslati, Hager, 2022, Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie = New Literary Observer (175) pp 26-39, Published

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Book Review of: 'Atheism' by Alexander Kojève, translated by Jeff Love ; and 'The black circle, a life of Alexander Kojève' by Jeff Jove

Weslati, Hager, 2020, Chiasma : A Site For Thought (6), 1 pp 200-216, Accepted/In press

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Unaccented beat: positional politics and the enigma of visibility in The Stuart Hall Project

Weslati, Hager, 2018, African and Black Diaspora (11), 3 pp 293-308, Published

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The Inexistent in the Ontology of Alexandre Kojève

Weslati, Hager, 2017, China Media Research (13), 4 pp 48-56, Published

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Kojeve's letter to Stalin

Weslati, Hager, 2014, Radical Philosophy (184) pp 7-18, Published

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La pensée du desert: the paradox of 'theory' and the narrative of boom and bust in cultural studies

Weslati, Hager, 2010, British Journal of Haematology (16) pp 47-62, Published

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Kant

Weslati, Hager and Kojève, Alexandre (2024). London, U.K.: [Published]

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Hegel, logic and speculation

(2019). London, U.K.: (Bloomsbury Publishing) [Published]

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[Translation] Notion of authority by Alexandre Kojeve

Weslati, Hager (2014). London, U.K.: [Published]

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The silence of legitimacy

Weslati, Hager (2026). In: Shoikhedbrod, Igor, (eds.), London, U.K.: [Published]

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Introduction: speculation and hermeneutics of effectual reality

Pagano, Maurizio and Weslati, Hager (2019). In: Bubbio, Paolo Diego, De Cesaris, Alessandro, Pagano, Maurizio, Weslati, Hager, (eds.), London, U.K.: pp 1-14 [Published]

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The silence of logik: Hegel after Kojeve

Weslati, Hager (2019). In: Pagano, Maurizio, Bubbio, Diego, De Cesaris, Alessandro, Weslati, Hager, (eds.), London, U.K.: pp 217-232 [Published]

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Travel in disguise: on travel writing and cultural governance

Weslati, Hager (2009). In: Brisson, Ulrike, Schweizer, Bernard, (eds.), Newcastle upon Tyne, U.K.: pp 85-109 [Published]

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Deserts in literary and religious fundamentalism

Weslati, Hager (2008). In: Stierstorfer, Klaus, Kern-St├ñhler, Annette, (eds.), Heidelberg: Germany: Universit├ñtsverlag Winter pp 187-212 [Published]

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