My new book with University of Minnesota Press, How We Became Sensorimotor: Movement, Measurement, Sensation was published in October 2021. You can buy it from the publisher themselves, or the usual book retail outlets including Amazon US and UK, and the Book Depository (which has free worldwide delivery). The book is the culmination of years... Continue Reading →
Courtesy of staff at University of Pittsburgh's Medical Center (UPMC), in September 2013 I was invited to the Sensory Substitution Lab to do something that I have wanted to do for years: have a hands-on experience with a device that I have written about. WICAB's 'BrainPort' is a 'sensory substitution' device that translates a visual feed from a camera... Continue Reading →
Or, put another way: I am about to become a 'glasshole'. A research grant co-authored with a colleague from Urban Studies, appropriately named Michael Glass, has meant we are awaiting delivery of a bunch of video-recording equipment along with one very new, very shiny Google Glass kit. Why for research in Urban Studies? We're going... Continue Reading →
The Society for Literature, Science and the Arts (SLSA) have a fantastic conference each year. Someone told me about it last year too late, there was a 'stream' of panels with papers on the senses, so I kicked myself and resolved to submit something the following year. I nearly missed the deadline, but because it... Continue Reading →
Around November of 2012 I started having conversations with Professor Eva Simms at Duquesne University. We met through the Society for Phenomenology and the Human Sciences (SPHS) mailing list. Then we got talking with Alex Kranjec, a relatively new faculty member who does fascinating work in a neuroscience lab. This is pretty unusual for Duquesne,... Continue Reading →
The Einstein Forum based in Potsdam, near Berlin, has asked me to contribute an evening lecture ahead of a full day's discussion, a symposium, about touch. Fantastic stuff, and you can read more about the event here. It includes Martin Grunwald, from the Haptik Lab in Leipzig, whose research concentrates on the psychological and neurological aspects of haptic... Continue Reading →
It would be remiss not to include more details on the actual contents, you know... so a table of contents, and the flyer (PDF) from the publisher: Contents Introduction: placing touch within social theory and empirical study - Mark Paterson, Martin Dodge and Sara MacKian 1. Negotiating therapeutic touch: encountering massage through the ‘mixed bodies’ of Michel... Continue Reading →
So here it is. A call for papers for a conference session back in 2007, organised initially by Sarah Mackian, Martin Dodge and Chris Perkins. My involvement later on, and the thought-provoking, well-attended sessions led to us proposing an edited collection. And here we are, years later, with the actual book on its way to... Continue Reading →
Rather wonderful news: after a lunch with the Dean of the McAnulty College of Liberal Arts at Duquesne University, I was invited to be Scholar in Residence. I've filled in the forms and means I'll be able to have regular visits to the wonderful library, with its Center for Phenomenology. This section of the library has archives including... Continue Reading →
Sensory/Motor 