Brad Evans (author)

Evans holds two master's degrees from the University of Leeds, in development economics and international relations. His PhD, titled "War for the Politics of Life", dealt with forms of resistance to liberal regimes of power, during which he spent visiting the Zapatista communities of Chiapas, Mexico.[2]

Evans was previously Senior Lecturer of International Relations at the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies at the University of Bristol.[3] He has been a visiting fellow at the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University, New York (2013–14) and distinguished society fellow at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire (2017).[4]

Evans' writing presents political, philosophical and aesthetic perspectives on violence.

In 2011, Evans founded the Histories of Violence project which sought to explore 'the theoretical, aesthetic and empirical dimensions to violence'.[5] As part of this project, Evans co-directed a documentary, Ten Years of Terror, with Simon Critchley.[6] This was screened at 11am at the Solomon K. Guggenheim on the 9, 12, and 13 September, 2011.[7]

As a further extension of the Histories of Violence Project, from 15 December 2015 to 23 February 2017, Evans hosted a series of conversations on violence for the opinion section of the New York Times, co-authoring ten pieces with thinkers such as Simon Critchley, Bracha Ettinger, Zygmunt Bauman, Richard Bernstein and Simona Forti.[8] This series was continued at the Los Angeles Review of Books, where Evans has co-authored articles with various artists and thinkers including Oliver Stone, Russell Brand, John Akomfrah, Elaine Scarry, Malcolm London and Marina Abramovic.[9]

As a guest-editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books, in 2015 Evans curated a collection of essays dedicated to the commemoration of the death of the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze.[10] In 2020, he curated a collection of short essays by various thinkers and artists in self-isolation.[11]

Evans has also authored or co-authored six articles in other major broadsheet papers: twice for the Independent[12][13] and Newsweek,[14][15] and once each for the Guardian[16] and Times.[17] Evans is an occasional guest on Russell Brand's podcast series, Under the Skin.[18] His 2013 book Liberal Terror was the focus for the inaugural episode of the podcast.[19]

As of December 2020, Evans' published academic work encompasses one single-authored book, two co-authored books, and three co-edited volumes. He has co-edited five journal special issues, and produced four single-authored book chapters, seven co-authored book chapters, eight single-authored peer-reviewed journal papers, and eight co-authored journal papers.[20] He has also co-authored a graphic novel.

Single-authored Academic Books

• Liberal Terror (Cambridge, Polity Press: 2013)[21]

Co-authored Academic Books

• Disposable Futures: The Seduction of Violence in the Age of the Spectacle (San Francisco, City Lights: 2015) (with Henry A. Giroux)[22]
• Resilient Life: The Art of Living Dangerously (Cambridge, Polity Press: 2014) (with Julian Reid)[23]

Co-edited Academic Books

• Violence: Humans in Dark Times (San Francisco, City Lights: 2018) (Co-edited with Natasha Lennard)[24]
• Histories of Violence: An Introduction to Post War Critical Thought (London, Zed Books: 2017) (Co-edited with Terrell Carver)[25]
• Deleuze & Fascism: Security, War & Aesthetics (London, Routledge: 2013) (Co-edited with Julian Reid)[26]

Single-authored Non-Academic Books

• The Atrocity Exhibition: Life in an Age of Total Violence (Los Angeles, LA Review of Books Press: 2019)[27]

Co-authored Graphic Novels

• Portraits of Violence: An Illustrated History of Radical Thinking (London, New Internationalist: 2016) (with Sean Michael Wilson)[28]