Geoff Shullenberger received an M.St. in European Literature from Oxford University and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Brown University. He is a Senior Lecturer in the Expository Writing Program at New York University.

Geoff’s Ph.D. dissertation at Brown examined the literary representation of paranoia in the 19th and 20th centuries and its relation to psychiatric and psychoanalytic theories of paranoid schizophrenia, with a particular focus on Argentina, where he carried out funded research. Subsequently, he became interested in contemporary paranoid online subcultures such as “targeted individuals” and more recently, 5G conspiracists, and has published extensively on this subject. Much of his current research and writing focuses on the circulation of critical theory outside of academic settings, especially on the internet, as well as the relationship between academic theories and conspiracy theories. In 2020, he started a blog, outsidertheory.com, which tracks these phenomena.