DoctorCindy Zeiher

My interests lie in how psychoanalytic theory and creativity contribute to human services studies, practice and politics. Specifically, I am dedicated to close readings of Freud and Lacan, as well as contemporary French feminist philosophers, yielding new insights into curiosities regarding contemporary theoretical and creative expressions of subjective and collective antagonisms.

Recently, I've completed a book manuscript on Jankélévitch's theory of ‘political refusal’ following the Holocaust from a Lacanian perspective. I am currently working on a manuscript titled 'Music in Crisis: Psychoanalysis and Philosophy'.

In 2025, I completed editing a collection of essays, 'Psychoanalysis and Stupidity' (Rowman & Littlefield), which puts the experience of encountering stupidity as a specific philosophical, subjective, and social curiosity. Among other things, I have published texts on psychoanalysis, the status of curiosity, creativity, subjectivities and ontology. I have also translated German and French texts into English, the most recent being a collection of essays by German activist-feminist-philosopher Frigga Haug (Edited by Alex Colligs and Jeta Mulaj, Routledge, 2026). Between 2019 and 2024, I regularly presented seminars at the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SAZU). 

In addition to music and psychoanalytic scholarship, I am a published poet and excited to be one of the 2026 'Attention Studies' writers-in-residence at The Physics Room Contemporary Art Space. During this time, I will be working on a quick-spirited, independent collection of poetry inspired by Aotearoa visual artist, poet, and experimental filmmaker Joanna Margaret Paul. 

My editorial commitments are:

CT&T: Continental Thought & Theory (cofounder and editor, along with Mike Grimshaw) - 2016-2023
CounterFutures: Leftist Thought in Aotearoa/NZ Journal
Emerging Conversations in the Global Humanities Book Series (Parlour Press)
Contemporary Psychoanalytic Studies Book Studies (Brill)
S: Journal of the Circle for Lacanian Ideology Critique (Open Humanities Press)

My current membership includes:

Centre for Lacanian Analysis Aotearoa/New Zealand
Aotearoa/New Zealand Society of Authors
Aotearoa/New Zealand Musicological Society

Australian Society for French Studies

I supervise/have supervised thesis students whose research questions focus on:

Music and film

Textual and discourse analysis

Psychoanalysis (Lacan and Freud) 

Emotions, affect and subjectivities
Feminism(s) and knowledge production
Ontology and the philosophy-psychonalysis nexus 

Hyperethics 

If you are interested in exploring postgraduate research questions relating to the above, please be in touch.