TIAN — Transversal Institutional Analysis Network

A network of researchers and organisers who study, invent, and reshape institutions.

About

Our work draws upon the histories of Institutional Analysis (IA) that emerged in France, Italy, North Africa, and South America during the post-war era, informed by the theories and practices of scholars practitioners such as Anne Querrien, Frantz Fanon, François Tosquelles, Félix Guattari, Jean and Fernand Oury, Suley Rolnik, Franco Basaglia and Franca Ongaro, among others.

We understand institutions to be found in practices that produce sociality at multiple scales—from the individual to the group to the larger establishments and infrastructures that, obeying a matrix of market and state logics, structure daily life and open possibilities of change in it. Working across schools, mental health institutions, arts organisations, social services, urban and municipal establishments, and social movements, we are led by the idea that crises diagnosed at the individual level can be traced to practices habituated within contemporary institutions and instituting practices, themselves bearing the traces of colonial and fascist subjectivities and forms of organisation. Echoing Jean Oury’s poignant statement, “The institution makes us sick,” we work in situated contexts to analyse institutions’ profound impact on local and planetary well-being and to imagine ways of bettering the local situations.

As a network, we move beyond the diagnostic and binary formulation of the inside and outside of institutions to creatively invent, inhabit and mould them otherwise.

Our work takes the form of: - Gatherings - Activating archives - Translating - Writing and Publishing - Institutional Interventions - Public Events

Recent projects by networks’ members include:

Participants (in alphabetical order):

Sanja Bojanić

Sanja Bojanić is a researcher focused on contemporary forms of gender, racial, and class practices. She studied philosophy at the University of Belgrade and obtained multiple M.A. degrees and a Ph.D. from the University of Paris 8. Bojanić serves as the executive director of the Center for Advanced Studies for Southeast Europe (CAS SEE) and teaches at the Academy of Applied Arts in Rijeka. Her work combines philosophical inquiry with social activism to address contemporary inequalities, exploring the intersections of theory and practice.

Han Dee

Han Dee is a writer and PhD candidate in creative writing at Queen Mary University, London. Their project is a nonfiction narrative about a relative’s experiences in high-security psychiatric institutions in England from 1972-2002. Combining institutional analysis and abolitionist perspectives, Han explores the lives of those detained in forensic settings and societal responses to those deemed ‘mad’ and ‘bad,’ envisioning alternative approaches. Their work aims to challenge societal norms and advocate for systemic change.

Anthony Faramelli

Anthony Faramelli is a psychosocial researcher and group practitioner. He lectures in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London, and serves on the Executive Board of the Association for Psychosocial Studies. He authored Resistance, Revolution, and Fascism: Zapatismo and Assemblage Politics and co-edited Spaces of Crisis and Critique: Heterotopias Beyond Foucault. Currently, he is writing a monograph titled The Mass Psychology of Fascism in the Age of Machines. His work intersects political theory and psychosocial studies, focusing on contemporary issues.

Janna Graham

Janna Graham is a researcher, educator and organiser working at the intersections of institutional pedagogy, radical research and anti-colonial inheritances. Her recent work looks at the aural, visual and micropolitical dimensions of urban dispossession and resistance, and studies how legacies of colonial administration underpin neoliberal subjectivities, institutions and modes of publicity. She is co-author of the book How Conflicts and Media Make Migrants (MUP, 2020), a founding member of the Transversal Network for Institutional Analysis (TIAN), a member of the international sound and political collective Ultra-red and a Senior Lecturer in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Valeria Graziano

Valeria Graziano is a cultural theorist and organizer. She lectures at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies in Giessen, and is an associate researcher at the Centre for Advanced Studies, University of Rijeka. Graziano’s practice is rooted in institutional analysis, Italian operaismo, and popular pedagogy, focusing on militant conviviality, the refusal of work, and collective repair. With Graham, Kelly and others she co-initiated the Micropolitics Research Group in 2007. She is one of the convenors of the Pirate Care Syllabus (book forthcoming with Pluto Press). Her current project “Figure It Out! The Art of Living Through System Failures” (Creative Europe) explores strategies of popular illegalism.

Susan Kelly

Susan Kelly is a writer, artist, organiser, educator, and Senior Lecturer in Fine Art Critical Studies at the Department of Art at Goldsmiths. Her current research focuses on the relationships between art and micropolitics, exploring how subjectivity becomes a site for analysing and intervening in capitalism and imperialism. She has worked in performance, video, installation, drawing, and public interventions. Recently, she has been writing and co-producing participatory militant investigation workshops and research processes. Kelly is involved in movements against free labour, precarity, and exploitation in cultural work and universities. Her research includes practices of rehabilitation and the government of the self, exploring jihadi rehabilitation camps and anti-insurgency practices, and the Micropolitics Research Group, examining anti-psychiatry, institutional analysis, and social movements.

Virginia Lázaro

Virginia Lázaro is a researcher interested in the affective dimension of images, their relations with the psychosocial spheres of which they form part, and their intersections with the institutions in which they are produced and distributed. From a practice-based background, she moved to theory and is now a PhD student at Goldsmiths, University of London, in the Visual Cultures department. Her current research focuses on the distribution of online images, specifically memes, and their roles in (micro)fascism and iconoclasm in today’s societies.

Isabell Lorey

Isabell Lorey is a political theorist and professor of Queer Studies in Science and the Arts at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. She has held positions at Berlin University of the Arts, Humboldt University Berlin, and universities in Basel, Vienna, and Kassel. A member of the feminist-activist group ‘kleines postfordistisches Drama,’ she worked for ARD and ZDF. Lorey co-edits the publication platform transversal.at. Her research focuses on precarization under neoliberalism, social movements, care relations, democratic theory, and political immunisation. Currently, she is writing a monograph on improvisation, Tosquelles’ surrounds, and their effects on 20th-century political philosophy. Her books include State of Insecurity and Democracy in the Political Present.

Stefan Nowotny

Stefan Nowotny is a philosopher based in Málaga and Vienna. He received his PhD from the University of Leuven (Louvain-la-Neuve) in Belgium and has taught at various European universities, including Goldsmiths, University of London (2011–2022). He co-authored and co-edited various books, collaborated in a number of research projects of the eipcp – European Institute for Progressive Cultural Policies, and is part of the editorial board of the eipcp’s publishing platform transversal (transversal.at). Besides teaching commitments, his work currently focuses on the philosophy and politics of translation, on modes of affectivity, perception and subjectivation in contemporary technocapitalism, and on the histories and potentials of institutional analysis. transversal

Anne Querrien

Anne Querrien is a sociologist and close associate of Felix Guattari. She serves on the editorial boards of Multitudes and Chimères in France. Querrien has authored several papers on Deleuze and Guattari studies and was a member of the Centre d’études de recherches et de formation institutionnelles (CERFI). She briefly worked at La Borde and focuses on the institution of school. Her research continues to explore the impacts of institutional practices on education and their influence on social structures. Links: www.revue-chimeres.fr www.cairn-info/revue chimeres.fr www.cairn-info/revue multitudes.fr www.chaosmosemedia.net

Pantxo Ramas

Pantxo Ramas is a social researcher focused on care, institutional critique, and welfare. With an academic background in social sciences, political economy, and urban studies, he has engaged in European and Latin American social movements. Ramas collaborates on institutional transformations in care and health in Europe with entrarafuera.net. He co-founded the documentation centre Oltre Il Giardino with Franco Rotelli for the Department of Mental Health of Trieste. His research addresses systemic issues in mental health care, emphasizing collaborative and transformative approaches.

Valentin Schaepelynck

Valentin Schaepelynck is Assistant Professor at University of Paris 8. After studying philosophy, he focused on the different aspects of institutional analysis, as well on the different ways of using the concept of institution, at the crossroads of theory and social practices. His most recently published book is L’institution renversée. Folie, analyse institutionnelle et champ social, Editions Eterotopia, 2018.

Christian Tonner

Christian Tonner is a visual artist and practice-led researcher based in London. His work explores the spatial dimension of meaning transmission, drawing on aesthetics, psychological theory, and institutional analysis. Tonner’s work has been exhibited internationally, and he initiated the lecture series ‘ti od tsuj’. He is currently pursuing doctoral studies in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. His research integrates artistic practice with theoretical investigations into institutional critique.

Julie Van der Wielen

Julie Van der Wielen is a postdoctoral researcher at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, specializing in 20th-century French philosophy and philosophical anthropology. Her PhD research on subjectivity in Gilles Deleuze’s early works was published as Empirisme transcendantal et subjectivité in 2023. She is currently working on a research project on Félix Guattari’s thought, focusing on his critiques of signification and cybernetics. Her work bridges historical and contemporary philosophical inquiries, contributing to a deeper understanding of Guattari’s impact on modern thought. Links: https://www.julievanderwielen.org https://vubirelec.academia.edu/JulieVanderWielen https://ethu.research.vub.be/julie-van-der-wielen

Rachel Wilson

Rachel Wilson is a practice-based researcher working in accommodation services for people with high support mental health needs, operated by the charity SHP. Her work intersects psychotherapy, aesthetics, filmmaking, and institutional analysis. Wilson is conducting her doctoral studies and is an Associate Lecturer in BA Curating in the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is a member of the mental health collective Other Ways to Care. Her research integrates practical and theoretical approaches to mental health, focusing on innovative care models.