I was in Manchester at the end of August for the annual conference of The British Society for Phenomenology. I first attended the conference as a MA student sometime around 1985 and later served Secretary of the Society for seven years. It was an honour to be invited back as a keynote speaker to give a talk ‘Michel Serres and the Natural Contract: Intersubjectivity, Science and Politics. (David Webb)
Our late friend and colleague’s book Order and the Virtual: the Philosophy and Science of Deleuzian Cosmology (Edinburgh University Press, 2024) is moving through the production stages and we’re looking forward to its publication around April next year. Many thanks to Patrick Haughton for the wonderful cover art. There’ll be a launch event, so watch this space.
It was a great pleasure to be the external for Lilian Kroth’s PhD examination at Cambridge University last month. Lilian wrote a really fine thesis entitled Michel Serres’s Philosophy of Limits. Passages between the Philosophy of Science and Critical Theory. Lilian’s work is always worth reading, and here’s an example: Lilian Kroth, ‘Entropy’s Critical Translations: Following Serres’s Path through the North-West-Passage’, Technophany Vol 2(2), 2023. https://doi.org/10.54195/technophany.14313.
We’re a little late with this news but congratulations to Stuart Blaney, who was awarded his PhD last year for a thesis entitled Practices of Equality and Freedom: Rancière and Foucault. Stuart’s examiners were Joseph Tanke (University of Hawaii) and Patrick O’Connor. .
Here’s an interview with Patrick O’Connor about his latest book, Cormac McCarthy, Philosophy and the Physics of the Damned (Edinburgh University Press, 2022).
As most of our students and postgraduate researchers work with us online our Visiting Speaker program is also held online. Our guests share work in advance, which is then discussed at live events. The events are recorded for those students unable to attend at the time. Recent speakers include:
Ulrich Haase (Manchester Metropolitan University) Heidegger and Nietzsche – Phenomenology and Ontology
Katrina Mitcheson (University of the West of England) Pregnancy as a Metaphor of Self-Cultivation in Nietzsche’s Dawn
Michael Granado (Staffordshire University) Gaston Bachelard’s Philosophy of Time
William Watkin (Brunel University), On Bioviolence
Joost van Loon (Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt), Historical Materialism and Actor Network Theory.
Niki Young (University of Malta) Only Two Peas in a Pod: On the Overcoming of Ontological Taxonomies
On 11th December 2023 I’ll be speaking as part of a launch event for The Vattimo Dictionary, ed. Simonetta Moro (Edinburgh University Press, 2023), a guide to and celebration of the work of the Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo. Full details of the launch and how to join are here. (David Webb)
Dave Monroe, who’s working on Serres for his PhD, and I had a great time at TU Dresden at this outstanding conference on Michel Serres and the Environmental Humanities. Thanks to Moritz Ingwersen and Beate Ochsner for organising this event. (David Webb).
David Webb presented a paper at the conference Michel Serres: Thinking Beyond Boundaries, held at the Maison française d’Oxford in June 2022.
Patrick O’Connor in conversation with David Webb about Michel Serres – a good way to find out a little about what makes his work so interesting and so important today.
https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-n8a9z-12643ae