Aislinn O’Donnell received her PhD in philosophy from the University of Warwick and currently lectures in Philosophy of Education in Mary Immaculate College (University of Limerick). She is also Associate Fellow with GRADcam. O'Donnell has taught philosophy in a number of universities including UCD and the University of Dundee. She was also involved in the NCAD MA Art in the Contemporary World and is currently working with NCAD on a European Grundtvig project examining the role of cultural practice and educations in prisons. O'Donnell is interested in finding ways to democratise philosophy so she has been teaching philosophy classes and developing collaborative research with people who may not have previously encountered philosophy, and who may also have left school early. Some participants were in recovery from drug use or on methadone whilst others were in prison or had spent time in prison at some stage of their lives. Her other philosophical interests include Spinoza and the Spinozist heritage, the relationship between passivity and vulnerability and ethical life, relational ontologies, and the relationship betweeen institutions and the production of subjectivity drawing on the work of Foucault, Deleuze, Oury, and Guattari.

At Terminal Convention O'Donnell will examine the way in which certain forms of contemporary art practice, in particular those premised upon a continued ethical relationship with participants, confound some of the contractual presuppositions allowing art works to be sold as commodities. With the artist Jonathan Cummins, she will consider the additional complexity of making work that cannot be shown. She will then speak (briefly) about how contemporary practices force interesting re-imaginings of markets and commodities.