Posts & Reflections
Thoughts on philosophy and theology; helpful advice on teaching, learning, and coding.
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Research Hacks #24: What we think about when we think about academic impact
No-one working in academia today needs me to point out the importance of the impact agenda, nor the way in which it coaxes us to understand the value of our work in particular ways and take it in particular directions. In this post I want to explore one narrow but important set of questions within
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If my brain is damaged, do I become a different person? Catherine Malabou and neuro-identity
A couple of years ago I had the privilege of teaching in a joint Monash-Warwick undergraduate unit examining the theme of identity across the arts, humanities, social sciences and sciences. My own contribution was a seminar on the work of Catherine Malabou, entitled ‘If my brain is damaged, do I become a different person? Catherine Malabou and neuro-identity’.
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French Philosophy Today paperback now shipping
I just received my copy of French Philosophy Today in paperback. You can find it on Amazon here. Alain Badiou, Quentin Meillassoux, Catherine Malabou, Michel Serres and Bruno Latour: this comparative, critical analysis shows the promises and perils of new French philosophy’s reformulation of the idea of the human. See here for chapter summaries.
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YouTube video of my paper on Michel Serres and the Question of Alterity in Recent French Thought, with improved audio
I have now tidied up the video from yesterday’s seminar on “Michel Serres and the Question of Alterity in Recent French Thought” and improved the quality of the audio. Here is the new YouTube version:
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Stephen Zepke’s Sublime Art now available: details of giveaway/exchange offer
My copies of Stephen Zepke’s Sublime Art arrived this morning. Thanks to Stephen, Carol and everyone at EUP for making such a fantastic volume. I can offer two of my copies as free giveaways either 1) if you pay the postage from Melbourne, Australia or 2) in exchange for a similar priced book/books of your
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Download the handout for my live-streamed paper on Serres and alterity this coming Tuesday
If you are planning to follow my live-streamed paper on Michel Serres and alterity on Periscope this coming Tuesday, you might want to download the handout that will be distributed to seminar participants. Here it is: The handout contains fourteen quotations and two diagrams to which I will refer in the course of the paper. During
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Reflections on live streaming academic papers with remote Q&A
First of all, some good news: Deakin have given me the go-ahead to live stream my seminar on Michel Serres next Tuesday. Thank you Daniela! This morning I tested streaming live video in Twitter and discovered a few things that you might find useful if you’re planning to tune in (as we used to say
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I’m planning to tweet live video of my research seminar on Michel Serres and the Question of Alterity next Tuesday
Next Tuesday I will be giving a seminar at Deakin Univesity, Melbourne, on Michel Serres’s understanding of alterity. The paper comes from the first chapter of my book on Michel Serres, on which I have been able to do some more work recently. I’m trying to get permission from Deakin to tweet a live video
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Research Hacks #23: Three Microsoft Word macros for quick mark-up of articles, essays and thesis chapters
I have the pleasure of reading a lot of student essays and supervising a number of research students, and over the years I have found that marking up an essay or thesis chapter before I read it helps me to focus and read effectively. The technique also speeds up the reading of articles in Microsoft
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Research hacks #22: Come to terms with a new theory or thinker by using an ‘assumptions pyramid’
After a few posts on planning and presenting research findings, it’s time to return to the core of the research process: understanding, ordering and refining ideas. Let’s think of a particular research scenario: you have to come to terms with a new theory in your discipline. This is a phase of research that can sometimes