Dr. Sevket Benhur Oral started his career as a Deweyan pragmatist. He received his PhD in Curriculum and Instruction with a concentration in educational philosophy in the College of Human Sciences at Iowa State University, USA in 2007. In his dissertation, he focused on what he terms “the ideal of teaching as consummatory experience” in relation to John Dewey’s concept of “experience” as the latter was elucidated in Dewey’s later works, especially, Art as Experience and Experience and Nature. His focus now is on contemporary issues in continental philosophy. He is particularly interested in the work of Graham Harman, Quentin Meillassoux, and Ray Brassier along with Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek. He has an abiding interest in East Asian philosophies, particularly, the Kyoto school of philosophy thinkers. His main research areas are social and philosophical foundations of education, Dewey studies, Speculative Realism, and phenomenological studies in education.
