Oscar King

Oscar King is a PhD candidate in American Studies at the United States Studies Centre, and the inaugural recipient of the USSC PhD Scholarship. His dissertation examines the mainstreaming of conspiracy theory in the contemporary American imagination. By developing the framework of ‘Cultural Parapolitics’, his research maps how increasingly popular perceptions of state secrecy in American political discourse have corresponded with, and been mobilised by, paranoid aesthetics in post-1945 fiction.

Oscar holds a Bachelor of Arts (Majors in American Studies and History) and a Bachelor of Advanced Studies (Honours in American Studies) from the University of Sydney. His honours thesis analysed how fictional constructions of John F. Kennedy’s image were appropriated by Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. During his undergraduate degree, Oscar completed a semester exchange at the University of Edinburgh in 2023, and an academic internship at the United States Studies Centre in 2024.