I am absolutely delighted that the manuscript I've been working on for the past several years has found a home with University of Minnesota Press. The previous Humanities Editor, Danielle Kasprzak, showed interest in my project quite a while back and we talked regularly at conferences. One of her last actions before leaving the Press... Continue Reading →
‘Work Forces’ Workshop: automation and the transformation of labour
The following text was one of the outcomes of the 'Work Forces' week-long workshop run by the History of Art and Architecture (HAA) Department at the University of Pittsburgh, and in which I was fortunate enough to participate... The ‘Continuous Miner’. A phrase that has a rhythm, and sounds almost poetic. Like Handel’s famous suite... Continue Reading →
‘Haptic Media Studies’ workshop, UCL, July 10
'Haptic Media Studies: Touch and Desire in a Digital Age' is the name of a one-day Symposium at the UCL knowledgelab, as part of their In-Touch project. The wonderful Professor Carey Jewitt has invited David Parisi and myself to speak. Full details are at the UCL website. There are two papers and two responses: David... Continue Reading →
Video introduction to Body & Society paper on pain
The video abstract for my recently published Body and Society article ‘On Pain as a Distinct Sensation: Mapping Intensities, Affects, and Difference in ‘Interior States’’ is now 'live' on the Theory, Culture and Society (TCS) website. I use images from the article and provide an overview of the paper. Have a look here. It's also on... Continue Reading →
Blindness, neuroplasticity, and technologies of sensory substitution
Thanks to an invitation from the editors, Brian Glenney and José Filipe Silva, a chapter has appeared in their rather wonderful Routledge collection The Senses and the History of Philosophy (2019). There are contributions from some well-known philosophers of perception and of ancient philosophy, too. My chapter neatly follows from Brian Glenney's chapter on the Molyneux... Continue Reading →
Pain as sensation – after Elaine Scarry
It took two years from initial submission to final publication. It started with an invitation to a conference in Brighton, UK in 2015 celebrating 30 years of Elaine Scarry's The Body in Pain. She was there, and gave a keynote. Subsequently a special issue of the journal Body and Society was put together by the conference organizers.... Continue Reading →
Alphonso Lingis at SPHS
My friend Tom Sparrow of Slippery Rock University has been editing the Alphonso Lingis Reader for University of Minnesota Press. The book was just released, and there was a launch panel at SPHS (Society for Phenomenology and the Human Sciences), part of the SPEP conference, at Penn State University on Sunday. Alphonso (or, as he likes... Continue Reading →
‘Why Haptic Media Studies?’, Media in the Wild conference, Siegen
Last month I gave a talk at 'Media in the Wild', the Annual Conference of the Collaborative Research Center Media of Cooperation, University of Siegen in Germany. Thoroughly enjoyed it, with papers by Arjun Appadurai (NYU) and William Urrichio (MIT). Abstract of the paper I gave: Why Haptic Media Studies? The ‘haptic moment’ we were waiting... Continue Reading →
We need to talk about… AI
Last month The Guardian newspaper's podcast series 'We need to talk about....' was about Artificial Intelligence. I submitted a question, and this was recorded for the podcast and addressed by the panel. The question? About the role of physical characteristics of AI machines, how we humans relate to their physicality, as robots become more prevalent... Continue Reading →
‘Vanguard Fellow’, IAS, Birmingham
Between April and May this year I have been a 'Vanguard Fellow' at the Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS), University of Birmingham, working with Dr. Jess Pykett in Geography and Earth Sciences (GEES) and the 'Embodied Geographies' research group. It has been a lot of fun, and included: a day workshop, 'Bodies 2.0. Embodied processes... Continue Reading →