Aaron Aquilina is a resident academic with the Department of English at the University of Malta. Before that, he was an Associate Lecturer and Assistant Director at Lancaster University.
His research interests comprise the varied intersections of literary criticism, continental philosophy, and literary and cultural theory, with a specific focus on queer theory, death studies, comparative approaches, pedagogical theories, and conceptual works of literature.
His book 'The Ontology of Death' (Bloomsbury) was published in May 2023. He has also co-edited a collection of essays on local higher education ('Further and Higher Education in Malta', KITE, 2023).
Aquilina has published chapters and articles on various facets of queer theory (in 'The Essay at the Limits' [Bloomsbury] and in 'Beyond the Deck' [McFarland], and with journals such as 'Shakespeare' and 'CounterText'). Other articles examine the literariness of the suicide note ('Parallax'), the concept of scale/indifference ('Textual Practice'), and posthumanism and epigenetics ('Word and Text'). Other publications include interviews with established thinkers (such as with Judith Butler, 'CounterText', and Terry Eagleton, 'ANTAE') and book reviews ('Hypatia', 'Phenomenological Reviews', 'Aphroconfuso').
He is also a creative writer of poetry and short stories. His poems have been published with 'Orbis', 'Stand', the 'International Human Rights Arts Journal', 'Modern Poetry in Translation', King's College London's 'Wild Court', 'Shot Glass Journal', and 'Lighthouse Magazine' (forthcoming). He has also translated a collection of poetry (John P. Portelli's 'Once I Forget', Daraja Press/Horizons) from Maltese to English, and written afterwords to poetry collections (Gioele Galea, 'Ghera'; John Peter Portelli, 'Barren is the Bay').
He is the founding general editor of 'antae' (ISSN: 2523-2126, 2013-current), an open-access, refereed, and international online journal that now welcomes creative work exclusively (um.edu.mt/antae).
