Tom Hedley is currently an FNRS Postdoctoral Researcher at the Université libre de Bruxelles (2025-), based within the Philixte Centre. His current research project, entitled “New Lines in the Sand: The Untaught Topologies of Viennese Modernism”, is supervised by Professor Helga Mitterbauer and Professor Petra James. Zooming in on the densely entangled scientific, philosophical and artistic networks in early 20th century Vienna, this project asks how a re-examination of non-canonical modernist literature in Vienna might more effectively embed modern mathematics within a diverse modernist collective.

A graduate of German and Mathematics at Trinity College Dublin (2012-2017), Tom obtained an MA in Literature, Art and Culture at the Friedrich-Schiller Universität Jena in 2019, which was supported by a DAAD-scholarship. Returning to Trinity College Dublin, he defended his PhD on spatial imagination and representation in modern mathematics and German-language modernism in December 2023. This project was fully funded by an Irish Research Council scholarship. As well as presenting his research at academic and transdisciplinary conferences internationally, Tom has published his research in Imaginaires (2021), Germanistik in Ireland (2021), Open Library of Humanities (2025), Germantistische Mitteilungen (2025) and Modern Language Review (forthcoming 2026).

Alongside his research duties, Tom has taught in Département des Langues et Lettres at the ULB since 2024, and he was previously a lecturer in comparative literature at Utrecht University (2023-4).

Contact : thomas.hedley@ulb.be