Shaghayegh Bandpey, BA MA
About the Person
Since July 2024 | Core Group Member, Research Center Social Theory, University of Innsbruck
Since December 2022 | Fellow, Doctoral Program Dynamics of Inequality and Difference in the Age of Globalization, University of Innsbruck
Since October 2022 | PhD Candidate, Faculty of Philosophy and History, University of Innsbruck | Dissertation Title: Rest: A Critique of Economic Ontology | Supervisors: Andreas Oberprantacher; Hans-Martin Schönherr-Mann; Fahim Amir
2018 | MA (Philosophy of Art), University of Art, Tehran, Iran | Master’s Thesis: The Concept of the Author in Michel Foucault
2014 | BA (Applied Arts), Shiraz University, Iran | Bachelor’s Thesis: Theoretical analysis of mandala dynamics in Nizami’s epic Haft Peykar drawing on C. G. Jung; practical realization through a visual articulation of the epic’s inner structure in mandala form.
PhD Project
Rest: A Critique of Economic Ontology
This dissertation examines residuality as a fundamental structure of modern political, epistemic, and material orders at the intersection of political theory, environmental humanities, and critical materiality. It proceeds from the thesis that modern orders operate not despite, but through the systematic production of material, social, and temporal residues. Through a strategic conceptual reconstruction, the project demonstrates that processes of formal abstraction and normative universality necessarily generate remainders that are externalized, functionalized, or naturalized. Residuality thus appears not as a deficit or exception, but as a constitutive condition of modern rationality. The dissertation neither offers a comprehensive history of liberalism nor proposes a theory of ecological crisis; rather, it advances a conceptual analysis of the conditions under which modern orders produce residues.
Building on this foundation, the project analyzes modern liberalism as a regime that actively reorganizes residuality. Focusing on so-called liberal objects, it shows how liberal orders do not eliminate material surpluses, ecological boundary objects, or social differences, but instead stabilize them through administrative and regulatory practices. In a third step, residuality is developed as an analytically operative concept by demonstrating that inequality emerges not as a deviation from the liberal ideal, but as a necessary effect of an order that depends on residues to secure stability, flexibility, and legitimacy. The aim of the dissertation is to establish residuality as an independent theoretical concept that systematically complements—and limits the explanatory scope of—central diagnostic terms such as crisis, externality, and exception.
Publications
- Bandpey, Shaghayegh. (forthcoming 2026). Residuality and the Logic of Modern Inequality.
- Bandpey, Shaghayegh. 2025. Müllfreiheit im Anthropozän: Von der Theorie zur ästhetischen und pädagogischen Praxis. In Carmen Sippl, Ioana Capatu & Rita Krebs (Hrsg.), „Es wird einmal …“ Wissen schaffen – Zukünfte erzählen. Innsbruck: Studienverlag (Pädagogik für Niederösterreich, Bd. 17).
- Bandpey, Shaghayegh. (in press). Discontinuous (De-)Coloniality: Using the Example of Apology and Resentment. In Decoloniality Pathways: Decolonising Knowledge and Learning Systems in the Global South, eds. Joel Onyango, Nora Ndege, Maureen Kabasa, Andreas Exenberger, Bettina Mahlert, Bernadette Müller Kmet & Andreas Melcher. London: Routledge.
- Bandpey, Shaghayegh. 2023. Restitution als Beispiel für (De-)Kolonisierung. Science Blog, Universität Innsbruck. Available at: https://www.uibk.ac.at/fsp-kultur/activities/blog/junge-forschung/restitution-bandpey/
- Bandpey, Shaghayegh, and Habib Arian. 2015. Discursive Barriers of the Art Economy in Iran. Proceedings of the First Iran Art Economy Conference, Shiraz, Iran. [original language: Farsi]
Conference Papers
- Bandpey, Shaghayegh. 2025. Satellite Dishes in Iran: Residual and Emergent Liberal Objects.
- STS-CH Conference Holding Things Together? Change, Continuity, Critique, University of Zurich and Zurich University of the Arts, September 10–12. Panel: Liberal Objects – What Remains of Them & How They Matter (or Not) Now.
- Bandpey, Shaghayegh. 2024. Epistemologization as a Practice of Integrating the Discursive and the Non-Discursive. International Conference Foucault: 40 Years After – Rethinking Foucault’s Historical Ontology of Ourselves: Subjects, Subjectivation, Self-Practices, University of Innsbruck, June 21–22. (Role: Section Chair, Discussant, and Contributor to the Conference Proceedings.)
Stipendien
- November 2025 | Beate-Ermacora-Stipendium, Verein Freund_innen der Kunsthalle Tirol im Taxispalais (Einmalige Förderung)
- Januar 2023 – Dezember 2024 | Exzellenzstipendium des Doktoratskollegs, Universität Innsbruck (Förderdauer: 24 Monate)
Research Interests
- Critical Materialities
- Environmental Humanities
- Western Philosophy