Born and educated in Dunedin, New Zealand, Olssen moved to England in 2001, and has researched and taught at the University of Surrey since that date. He researches include works on Foucault, education policy, social and political theory and quantum and post-quantum complexity approaches in the social sciences and he relates theoretical issues to contemporary matters of social and political concern, including neoliberalism, social theory, ethics, and higher education policy. Utilising a critical and constructivist approach across his individual books and articles, a nagging long-term interest is to develop a new non-foundationalist normative political ethics, inspired by Foucault and others, which can orientate politics, education and ethics in a global age.
Books
Olssen, M., Liberalism, Neoliberalism, Social Democracy: Thin Communitarian Perspectives on Political Philosophy and Education., New York: Routledge, 2010
Olssen, M., Toward a Global Thin Community: Nietzsche, Foucault and the cosmopolitan commitment, Paradigm Press, Boulder, Colorado, USA, October 2009
Olssen, M., Codd, J. and O’Neill, A-M, Education Policy: Globalisation, Citizenship, Democracy, London: Sage, 2004
Olssen, M Michel Foucault: Materialism and Education. Boulder, Colorado and London: Paradigm Publishers, 2006.
Recent Articles
Olssen, Mark 'Neoliberalism & Democracy: A Foucauldian Perspective on Public Choice Theory, Ordoliberalism and the Concept of the Public Good', in Damien Cahill, Melinda Cooper, Martijn Konings and David Primrose, eds. The Sage Handbook of Neoliberalism. London: Sage Publications, pp. 384 – 396.
Olssen, Mark 'Complexity & Learning: Implications for Teacher Education', in Michael A. Peters, Bromwyn Cowie and Ian Mentor A Companion to Research in Teacher Education. Singapore: Springer Nature, pp. 507 – 520.
Rille Raaper and Mark Olssen 'In Conversation with Mark Olssen: on Foucault with Hegel and Marx', Open Review of Educational Research, Vol. 4, pp. 96 – 117.
Olssen, Mark 'Neoliberalism and Beyond: The possibilities of a social justice agenda', in Stephen Parker, Kalervo N. Gulson and Trevor Gale, Policy and Inequality in Education. Singapore: Springer Nature, pp. 41 – 72.
Olssen, Mark 'Wittgenstein and Foucault: The limits and Possibilities of Constructivism', in Michael A. Peters and Jeff Stickney, A Companion to Wittgenstein on Education. Singapore: Springer Nature, pp. 305 – 320.
Richard Watermeyer and Olssen, Mark, ‘Excellence and Exclusion: the individual costs of institutional competitiveness’, Minerva, 54, pp. 201 –218, DOI: 10.1007/s1 1024 - 016- 9298 - 5.
Raaper, Rille, and Mark Olssen, ‘Mark Olssen on the neoliberalisation of higher education and academic lives: an interview,’ Policy Futures in Education, 14, pp. 147 –163. Available on-line first from 2/11/15, doi: 10.1177/1478210315610992.
Olssen, Mark, ‘Neoliberalism and Higher Education Today: research, accountability and impact’. British Journal of the Sociology of Education, Vol. 37,, pp. 129 – 148.
Olssen, Mark ‘Ascertaining the Normative Implications of Complexity for Politics: Beyond Agent-Based Modeling’, in Emilian Kavalski World Politics at the Edge of Chaos: Reflections on Complexity and Global Life. SUNY Press, New York, pp. 139 – 168.
Olssen, Mark and Michael Peters, ‘Marx, Education and the Possibilities of a Fairer World: Reviving Radical Political Economy through Foucault’, Linguistic and Philosophical Investigations, 14, pp. 39 – 69,.
Olssen, Mark ‘Social Democracy, Complexity and Education: Sociological Perspectives from Welfare Liberalism.’ Knowledge Cultures, Vol. 2, No. 6, pp. 115 – 129.
Olssen, Mark ‘Discourse, Complexity, Normativity: Tracing the elaboration of Foucault’s materialist concept of discourse’, Open Review of Educational Research, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 28–55.
Olssen, Mark 'Exploring Complexity through Literature: Reframing Foucault's research project with hindsight', Linguistic and Philosophical Investigations, 16, pp. 80 – 89..
