John Cash received his B.A. (Hons) degree, majoring in English Literature and Political Science, from the University of Melbourne and his doctoral degree in Political Science, specializing in Political Psychology and Social and Political Theory, from Yale University. His research interests are in the area of psychoanalytic social theory and psychoanalytic political theory. One focus of that research is an analysis of the conflict in Northern Ireland and the more recent attempts at reconciliation. His publications with that focus include <Identity, Ideology and Conflict> (Cambridge 1996, republished in paperback, 2010) and “Squaring some vicious circles: transforming the political in Northern Ireland” in <Consociational Theory>, Routledge, 2009. Other recent publications on a diverse range of topics include <Footy Passions>, co-authored with Joy Damousi, (UNSW Press, 2009) and a series of articles and chapters that draw critically on social and psychoanalytic theory in order to develop novel approaches to the analysis of social relations, subjectivity and entrenched political and ethnic conflict. These include “Waiting for Sociality” in <Waiting> (MUP, 2009), “Negotiating Insecurity; law, psychoanalytic social theory and the dilemmas of the world risk society” in Australian Feminist Law Journal, Vol 30, 2009, “Sublime Intensity: In the realm of sublimation” in <Force, Movement, Intensity> (MUP, 2011), “Sovereignty in Crisis” in <Unconscious Dominions> (Duke, 2011), “Obedience to Authority and Its Discontents” in <Responsibility> (MUP, 2012) and “Insecurity and the Instituted Imaginary” in <Dangerous Others, Insecure Societies> (Ashgate, 2013).
John is an editor of the Journal of Postcolonial Studies and a co-editor of Political Psychology. He is affiliated with the Graduate Program in Political Psychology at University of California Irvine and with CHAOS International Academic Network - Centre d’Études et de Recherches Transnationalistes - a Sorbonne Academic Centre of Research. In 2013 he was a Visiting Professor at the Sorbonne-Paris II, Pantheon-Assas.
He is an Honorary Fellow in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne, where, formerly, he was Deputy Director of the Ashworth Program in Social Theory. As well as supervising doctoral students, he also teaches a third year undergraduate subject on “Psychoanalysis and Social Theory” and a fourth year honours subject titled “Imagined Societies: Ideology, Subjectivity and Politics”.