Video & Audio
Lectures, interviews, panel discussions, and recorded appearances.
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Research hacks #20: Why it pays to plan your ideal week, and an Excel workbook to help you
In my last post I pointed out how time logging can help you build an accurate picture of how much time you are really spending on different tasks. That is only half the battle of taming your timetable however. The other half is working out how you want and ought to be spending your time, and
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Research hacks #19: Three benefits of time logging for academics, and one easy-to-use time logging app
Time logging is for executives, not academics, right? It’s for lawyers with billable hours, not for researchers with theses and books that take years to complete. Wrong. I have found that tracking the time I spend on different tasks has brought me three distinct benefits, and in this post I want to share some reflections
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Research hacks #18: 20 further tips on fielding questions after a conference paper
This is the second of two posts on how to field questions after your paper at an academic conference. The first one, which covers preparing for question time and knowing your main point, can be found here. Get to know the main types of question If you want to know how to answer any given
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Research hacks #17: 15 tips on fielding questions after a conference paper
In this fourth post on presenting a conference paper (following on from planning and writing a conference paper, delivering a paper and timekeeping and technology), I want to think through the often panic-inducing issue of how to approach the question and answer time at the end of your paper. This is the first of two posts on fielding
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Research hacks #16: 20 tips on timekeeping and technology for your conference presentation
This is the third post in a mini-series on presenting at conferences. Previous posts covered planning and writing a conference paper and delivering a paper. In this post I offer some tips and advice in relation to two aspects of giving a conference paper that can often sneak up and ambush unwitting presenters: timekeeping and technology. Timekeeping Know
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Research hacks #15: 15 Tips on delivering a conference paper
In the previous research hack I discussed how to plan and write a conference paper. Now we move on to delivering the paper to your conference audience. Delivering the paper Be enthusiastic, but not manic. If you don’t look interested in what your saying, why should your audience be? But if you come over like the Duracell
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Research hacks #14: 15 tips on planning and writing a conference paper
Judging by their behaviour, people seem to approach to the prospect of giving a conference paper wildly divergent ways. Watching some poor souls present, it looks for all the world as if they consider a conference paper to be the modern-day answer to trial by ordeal. Others seem to be approaching the exercise as a gladiatorial duel, the
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Research Hacks # 13: The power of planning your research project
Today I want to share one of the earliest research productivity hacks I ever learned, and one that has served me faithfully over many years. The principle behind it is simple: planning increases productivity, and things that get planned get done more often than things that don’t. By and large, and allowing for all necessary caveats, what
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Research hacks intermezzo: A cornucopia of writing and publishing advice from Stuart Elden
Over at Progressive Geographies Stuart Elden has curated a list of “some of the posts about writing and publishing from this blog”. The list contains around fifty posts and articles (some by Stuart, some external links) with lots of helpful and thought-provoking advice about research, writing and publishing. It’s well worth a browse. To read all the research hacks
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Research hacks #12: Seven ways of keeping up to date with developments in your field
Whether we like it or not, research trends dictate to a significant extent what is published and read in most fields. It’s all part of the room of conversations that I described in a previous post in this series. In order to draw readers to your work and contribute to a conversation that others are
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Stob lecture 2025 Video. The Human Remains: Fragility and Fulfilment in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Here is a video of my 2025 Stob lecture, exploring the philosophical and theological implications of AI. My title was “The Human Remains: Fragility and Fulfilment in the Age of Artificial Intelligence”. I set out to argue that this is a very exciting time to be a philosopher or theologian, because AI is forcing on…
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Armitage Lecture 2025: “Custodians of the Common Good: Christian Education in a Post-Christian World”
In June I had the honour of delivering the annual Isaac Armitage Lecture at the Shore School, Sydney. My title was “Custodians of the Common Good: Christian Education in a Post-Christian World”. The video is now available: More information about the lecture can be found here.
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The State of Nature and the Shaping of Modernity: Introduction
An introduction to the book The State of Nature and the Shaping of Modernity: Tracing the Roots of Colonialism, Secularity, and Ecology, forthcoming with Cambridge University Press in 2025. In this video, the first in a new series and rather longer than the others, I read the book’s Introduction, entitled “The State…
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Video: Panel on Biblical Critical Theory at ETS Conference
This panel, held to explore themes raised in Christopher Watkin’s book Biblical Critical Theory, was held at the 2023 conference of the Society for Biblical Literature and the American Academy of Religion, in San Antonio, Texas. The session was the Kirby Laing Centre’s Scripture and University Seminar. Welcome: Dr. Jonathan Arnold, (Cedarville University) Panelists: Dr.…
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Video: Panel on Biblical Critical Theory at ETS Conference
This panel, held to explore themes raised in my book Biblical Critical Theory, was held at the 2023 conference of the Evangelical Theological Society in San Antonio, Texas. Moderator: Dr. Jennifer Powell McNutt (Wheaton College) Panelists: Dr. Kristen Deede Johnson (Western Theological Seminary) Dr. Malcolm Foley (Baylor University) Dr. Greg Forster (Trinity Evangelical Divinity School)…
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AUDIO TALK: Michel Serres and the Parasitic Unmaking of Modernity
This is the audio of a talk I gave at the International Philosophical Seminar (IPS) in June 2022. It begins by showing how Michel Serres rethinks the foundational modern moment of the state of nature, and it then sketches a way of understanding modernity in terms of three recurring moments: a flattening, a division and…
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Podcast: “Renewing our Mental Models With Michel Serres”
In June 2022 I had the privilege of giving a keynote address for the NaturArchy: Towards a Natural Contract conference at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, with the title “Renewing our Mental Models with Michel Serres”. The talk is now available as a podcast below. Abstract: As our understanding of the world changes over…
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VIDEO: Towards a General Theory of Figures
This is a video of a paper I gave to the The Research Unit of Architecture Theory and Philosophy of Technics, part of the Institute for Architectural Sciences in the Department for Architecture Theory and Philosophy of Technics ATTP at Vienna University of Technology, at the invitation of Prof. Vera Bühlmann. In the talk I bring…
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Video: Our fractured state of nature: environment, emancipation, ecnonomy
This is a recording of a paper given at the Australasian Society of Continental Philosophy Conference, December 2021. Paper title “Artificial state of nature: how an aporia of myth shapes our experience of emancipation and the market” Abstract This paper argues that there are two contradictory modern Western understandings of nature, vividly captured in the…
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Video: Where is Rousseau’s state of nature?
This is a recording of a paper I gave at the 2021 Australian Society of French Studies Conference. Paper title: Siting Rousseau’s state of Nature Abstract: Rousseau’s account of the social contract relies, both logically and rhetorically, on his reconstruction of the so-called “state of nature”, a supposed pre-contractual condition of human life. There is…
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SPEP 2020 video and paper: Remembering and Thinking with Michel Serres
This September I had the privilege of taking part in a panel at SPEP 2020 (postponed until 2021) alongside Marjolein Oele and Brian Treanor. “Remembering and Thinking with Michel Serres” ranged over issues related to Serres’s contemporaneity, his natural contract idea, and the distinctiveness of his thought. Here is a recording of Brian’s paper and…
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Video: Advice on securing a large academic grant
I have been asked a few times in recent months what advice I would give to colleagues applying for competitive grants and fellowships, such as the Australian Research Council Discovery Project or Future Fellowship schemes. While my expertise is limited to my own experience and my one-time success in the Future Fellowship scheme, I’m more…
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TALK Rewriting the Social Contract – the Role of Christian Social Institutions
This guest lecture was delivered at Parliament House, Canberra, on 22 February 2021, at the invitation of the Church Community Restoration Project, an alliance of Christian community organisations committed to partnering government, individuals and communities as they face the challenges of a COVID-19 recovery in Australia. The lecture draws on research from the Australian Research…
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YouTube videos of ‘Ends of Autonomy’ colloquium papers: surveillance, neoliberalism, climate
This week my Warwick colleague Prof Oliver Davis and I co-hosted the second ‘Ends of Autonomy’ colloquium, eqploring how freedom is changing today in the light of new technologies, climate change and neoliberalism. Where presenters gave their consent, sessions were recorded and uploaded to the Ends of Autonomy Colloquia YouTube channel. Below are the videos…