Dr Ciaran Smyth is an artist, writer and researcher. In 2004 he completed his doctorate with the

Department of Sociology at University College Dublin. His dissertation drew on the work of

French philosophers Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, combining their post-structuralist

theory of knowledge with an ethnography of community-based psychiatry in the post-asylum

era.

In 2008 he co-founded Vagabond Reviews with artist Dr Ailbhe Murphy (1963 – 2024).

Vagabond Reviews is an interdisciplinary, socially engaged art and research platform integrating

collaborative knowledge production with multimedia / visual arts installations. Over the course

of their creative practice together as Vagabond Reviews they entered into dialogue, critical

(re)visions and creative collaborations across a range of situated territiries and contexts including

community development, new neighbourhoods, urban regeneration processes, institutional

networks, public art and curatorial commissions.

In 2021 Vagabond Reviews initiated a research process entitled Emergency Knowledge: An

Archive of Spectral Epistemologies. Conceived of as a mode of diagnostic aesthetics, this

research set out to create new forms of allyship among and between sites of instability locally

and globally where fast modes of know-how have emerged from extended crisis situations. The

work culminated in an exhibition entitled Emergency Knowledge: The Missing Archives at The

LAB Gallery, Dublin (April – May 2024).

He is currently based at the Patrick Street Studios, Dublin where his work combines consultancy

with a wide range of community and arts-based organisations, mentoring of socially engaged

artists, archival assemblage with respect to the early career projects of artist Ailbhe Murphy and

Vagabond Reviews projects (2007 – 2024) and new work, working title: Hauntological Sound

System. He has published widely in peer-reviewed journals, catalogue essays and independently

commissioned reviews in the field of socially engaged art and beyond.