Academic Career
- April 2026 – September 2026: KWI International Fellow, Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut Essen.
- October 2025 – Present: Associated Researcher, Ghent University, Department of Literary Studies.
- September 2022 – October 2025: Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Research Foundation Flanders (FWO-Vlaanderen), Department of Literary Studies, Ghent University.
- May 2021 – August 2022: Research Development Officer, Horizon EU Team, UCC Academy.
- September 2015 – September 2019: Doctoral Researcher, Irish Research Council (IRC), University College Cork.
Research Interests
- reader-response theory
- science fiction studies
- emotion studies
- epistemic emotions (awe, boredom, seriousness …)
- ecocritism
Publications
- Kavanagh, Ciarán. Refiguring Reader-Response: Experience and Interpretation in Contemporary Fiction. University of Nebraska Press, Frontiers of Narrative, April 2027.
- Kavanagh, Ciarán. “Cultivating Seriousness: Science Fiction, Authority, and the Rise of AI.” Futuri, vol. 25, May/June 2026.
- Kavanagh, Ciarán. “Science Fiction, and the Problem(atic) of Seriousness”. Extrapolation, vol. 66, no.1. 2025. https://doi.org/10.3828/extr.2025.2
- Kavanagh, Ciarán. “Slow, Complex, Dull? Climate Boredom and Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future”. Journal of Boredom Studies, no.3, 2025. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15294598
- Kavanagh, Ciarán. “Refiguring Reader-Response: Experience and Interpretation in J.G. Ballard’s Crash”. Experiencing Powerful Prose: How Textual Features Impact Readers. Edited by Mariane Utudji and Victoria Pöhls. Transcript, 2021.