Research » Research concentrations in CCS
Research in CCS comprises a series of research concentrations, which coincide with the research interests and expertise of individual staff and the overlaps between them. They include:
Somatechnics. [Convenor: Nikki Sullivan]
"Somatechnics" is a newly coined term used to highlight the inextricability of soma and techne, of the body (as a culturally intelligible construct) and the techniques in and through which bodies are formed and transformed. This term, then, supplants the logic of the 'and', indicating that technes are not something we add to or apply to the body, but rather, are the means in and through which bodies are constituted, positioned, and lived. As such, the term reflects contemporary understandings of the body as the incarnation or materialization of historically and culturally specific discourses and practices, and of any activity involving the body - in medicine, information technology, education. Somatechnics research meets a need in contemporary inter-disciplinary research on embodiment by helping bridge the divide between the sciences, arts, and humanities through the development, articulation, and dissemination of critically informed notions of bodily formation and transformation.
Recent publicationsRecent Events: Body Modification conference (2003); Body Modification Mark II conference (2005)
Critical Race, Ethnicity and Diaspora Studies. [Convenors: Joseph Pugliese, Goldie Osuri]
Ethnicity, Race and Migration Studies highlights the racialised and ethnicised constitution and production of contemporary nationalisms,diasporas, and globalisation. This research does not merely address the politics of racial, ethnicised or migrant identities, but aims toinvestigate the complex manner in which the contemporary system of nation-states has been and continues to be underpinned by colonial and racialised systems of knowledge regarding theories of law, culture, geography, history, religion, bodies, the human, science, medicine, development among a range of other discursive productions. The research projects in this area intervene in these colonial and racialised discursive productions through the use of critical and cultural theories in order to produce other ways of thinking abut law, culture, geography, history, religion, bodies, the human, science, medicine and development which are committed to futures based on justice.
Recent publicationsRecent Events: The Art of Disquiet: Practice, Theory, Performance (2004); Unrequited Justice (2004); Regimes of Terror (2005); Borderpolitics of Whiteness (2006)
Derrida and Cultural Studies. [Convenors: Nick Mansfield, Nicole Anderson]
Jacques Derrida's work increasingly came to focus on explicitly political issues to do with law, hospitality, the relationship between ethics and politics, terrorism and war. Our aim is to show the critical cultural function of deconstructive reading, particularly in relation to contemporary global poltical and ethical issues.
Recent publicationsRecent Events: The Political Futures of Jacques Derrida (2005)
Somatic Technologies [Convenors: Anne Cranny-Francis, Anthony Lambert]
This research concentration deploys both scientific and Foucauldian meanings of 'technology', to study the ways that human embodiment is generated by and generates the technologies - scientific (digital, biological, electromechanical), social, cultural - that characterize a particular space/time. Anne Cranny-Francis's most recent work is on embodiment and the senses (particularly touch) as they are deployed in a range of new (haptic, smart textiles) technologies. Anne's concerns are the politics and ethics of these technologies, along with an exploration of their role in producing new forms of embodiment. Anthony Lambert's work is particularly concerned with the politics of embodiment and spatiality, most recently as embodied in the debates surrounding Schapelle Corby. Anthony's interests include the ways in which race, gender and class are produced and mobilized within these debates.
Recent publicationsThe Dickinson Periodicals Project [Convenor: Joan Kirkby]
