A5026569776- Geographies of human-animal interactions
- Social Media and Politics
- Posthumanist Ethics and Activism
- Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection
- Agriculture Sustainability and Environmental Impact
- Gender, Feminism, and Media
- Body Image and Dysmorphia Studies
- Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature
- Human-Animal Interaction Studies
- Misinformation and Its Impacts
- Cinema and Media Studies
- Environmental Philosophy and Ethics
- Digital Games and Media
- Digital Media and Philosophy
- Media Studies and Communication
- Anthropological Studies and Insights
- Race, Genetics, and Society
- Theatre and Performance Studies
- Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence
- Rhetoric and Communication Studies
- Religion, Society, and Development
- Populism, Right-Wing Movements
- Philosophy and History of Science
- Animal testing and alternatives
- Religion, Ecology, and Ethics
University of Sheffield
2021-2025
Keele University
2015-2022
University of Nottingham
2014
St. John's University
2013
In the wake of widespread uptake and debate surrounding work Karen Barad, this article revisits her core conceptual contributions. We offer descriptions, elaborations, problematizations provocations for those intrigued by or invested in body work. examine Barad’s use quantum physics, which underpins conception material world. discuss political strengths position but also note tensions associated with applying physics to phenomena at macro-scales. identify both frictions unacknowledged...
A caring approach to knowledge production has been portrayed as epistemologically radical, ethically vital and fostering continuous responsibility between researchers research-subjects. This article examines these arguments through focusing on the ambivalent role of care within first large-scale experimental beagle colony, a self-professed ‘beagle utopia’ at University California, Davis (1951–86). We argue that was core colony; lived environment re-shaped in response animals ‘speaking back’...
Abstract Increasingly high-profile research is being undertaken into the socio-environmental challenges associated with over-production and consumption of food from animals. Transforming systems to mitigate climate change hidden hunger, ensure security good health all point reducing animal-based foods as a key lever. Moving beyond societal grand challenge requiring coordinated international by social sciences humanities. A ‘selective openness’ this range disciplines has been observed within...
This article sets out findings from a project focused on #stopIslam, hashtag that gained prominence following the Brussels terror attack of 2016. We initially outline big data analysis which shows how counter-narratives – criticizing #stopIslam momentarily subverted negative news reporting Muslims. The rest details qualitative complicate this initial positive picture. set key tactics engaged in by right-wing actors, self-identified Muslim users, would-be allies and celebrities elucidate...
This article intervenes in debates about whether public-facing social media enable the rapid spread of hate speech, or these platforms can offer valuable opportunities to contest it. Advancing scholarship on ‘networked counter-publics’ and research emphasising affective dimensions digital media, we identify three different modes counter-public contestation that coalesced Twitter immediate aftermath Christchurch terrorist attack. Using a combined keyword hashtag search, our project sampled...
There has been a dramatic surge in uses of big data analytics and automated methods to detect remove hate speech from social media, with these deployed both by platforms themselves within academic research. At the same time, recent scientific scholarship accused media decontextualizing complex sociological issues reducing them linguistic problems that can be straightforwardly mapped removed. Intervening debates, this article draws on findings two interdisciplinary projects, spanning five...
Numerous attempts have been made to understand the Anthropocene in relation overwhelming species and habitat loss. However, amidst these losses ecological niches emerged taken as signs of resilience hope: from mushrooms that flourish damaged forests urban wildlife brownfield sites. This article offers an alternative conception abundance, which addresses sociological conceptual challenges posed when abundance is a characteristic so-called pests, parasites pathogens. The draws together...
This article evaluates the contemporary state of radical participatory online news network Indymedia. After examining criticisms levelled at Indymedia from within critical communications and social movement studies, it provides a tabulated overview current activity then develops theoretical analysis problems faced by centres in range regions (focusing on Latin North America, Africa, West Asia Western Europe). Finally, concludes discussing how activists have attempted to overcome these...
This article addresses tensions within the emerging field of animal studies, which have arisen in process trying to craft an ethics that is not grounded humanist rights-frameworks, by--firstly--mapping how these debates are manifested and--secondly--positing Cary Wolfe’s concept "affirmative biopolitics" as means overcoming conceptual rifts. Building on work attributes influence posthumanism (Weisberg; Pedersen; Giraud), it argues embrace posthumanist thought has marginalised critique by...
This paper sets out quantitative findings from a research project examining the dynamics of online counter-narratives against hate speech, focusing on #StopIslam, hashtag that spread racialized speech and disinformation directed towards Islam Muslims which trended Twitter after March 2016 terror attacks in Brussels. We elucidate counter-narrative through contrasting it with affordances original anti-Islamic narrative was trying to contest. then explore extent each taken up by mainstream...
This paper appraises the role of critical-feminist figurations within environmental humanities, focusing on capacity figures to produce situated knowledges and pose site-specific ethical obligations. We turn four environments—the home, skies, seas microscopic—to examine work that various do in these contexts. elucidate how diverse figures—ranging from companion animals birds, undersea creatures bugs—reflect productive traffic between longstanding concerns feminist theory generate new...
This article advances research on mediated solidarity, by analyzing the contestation of Islamophobia social media platform Twitter, in context Brexit, Christchurch terror attack, and COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing a unique longitudinal dataset, gathered over 5-year period, we elucidate how evolving relations between platforms trigger events can enable solidarity networks to shift dominant narratives. Taking each event turn, demonstrate initial analysis these appear generate solidarities that...
Coming from a critical animal studies perspective, this essay develops an urgent challenge to what Zipporah Weisberg describes as the 'largely depoliticized approach within studies' (2009: 5), with focus on work of Donna Haraway. Drawing grassroots activist literature and practice, analyses some productive tensions between rights perspectives Haraway, which centre their different strategies for challenging symbolic material role animals biocapitalism. This reinstates value praxis studies,...
Abstract This article documents the roundtable “Unfamiliar Archives,” which took place as part of a two-day event to mark twenty years Cultural Politics. Drawing from range “archives in making” related activists, artists, social theorists, and digital media practices, participants reflect on political, ethical, epistemological provocations offered by their specific archival encounters. In particular, way experiences negotiating archives were inflected own initial unfamiliarity with norms...
In Fashionable Nonsense (1998), Sokal and Bricmont describe Latour's work as ‘either true but banal, or else surprising manifestly false’ (92). Using this characterisation of Latour ‘banal’ a springboard, short commentary responds to Blok Jensen's proposal reinvent actor-network theory (ANT) by interrogating the stakes risks their account his critics ‘uninteresting’. Rather than dismissing critique uninteresting, response underscores value engaging with strands Science Technology Studies...
In recent decades, bed bugs have swept across wealthy industrialized nations. After near extirpation in North America and Northern Europe, the return of these insects has led to a significant level public anxiety cultural notoriety. Here, we undertake an analysis human-bed bug relations order both better understand this contemporary resurgence critically examine concept “companion species.” We argue for conceiving as “estranged companions,” foreground need encounters between humans through...
Abstract Amid wider concern about the emergence of vast data archives that document and instrumentalize everyday user activities for purpose marketing, research, governance, this article turns to a series creative activist initiatives preserve heterodox internet histories. Though focus on three case studies—artistic engagements with GeoCities, traces left by Indymedia in contemporary activism, emerging ethical frameworks reusing social media data—the examines political significance attempts...