Speculative Humanities

Below are highlights of current research activity from our members. To explore more of our members research, please visit their staff profiles.

Professor Katharine Cockin is interested in reviving the study and performance of Karel Capek’s RUR. Rossum’s Artificial Robots. The play is a landmark in representations of artificial life, influenced by the technological shock of the First World War. Her research also focuses on Ellen Terry, the nineteenth-century actor and her daughter Edith Craig who was an influential theatre director and activist in the women’s suffrage movement.

• Learn more about Katharine's research on Ellen Terry and Edith Craig.

Dr Emily Jones works in post-human theory and law from a gender studies background. Her current work focuses on military technologies including autonomous weapons systems, human enhancement technologies, and the granting of legal personhood to the environment.

Matthew De Abaitua has collaborated with the UK government Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) on the application of speculative literatures to future threat planning.

Professor John Preston researches the racial and classed contexts of preparedness campaigns for disasters and emergencies. His latest book 'Grenfell Tower: Preparedness, Race and Disaster Capitalism' (2019) uses Marxist value critique and Critical Race Theory to argue that disaster preparedness increasingly works against working-class and racialised populations.

Dr Sean Seeger is engaged in interdisciplinary collaboration with a sociologist in a paper for SAGE journal Thesis Eleven, concerning the benefit of reading dystopian literature to sociology research.

• Read Sean's article on 'Dystopian Literature and the Sociological Imagination.'

Andrew Burton is a PhD student reconciling agency and dramatic structure in climate narratives.

Below are various publications from our members. To explore our members other publications, please visit their staff profiles.

• Matthew De Abaitua is the author of science fiction novels The Red Men (2007, 2017), IF THEN (Angry Robot, 2015) and The Destructives (Angry Robot, 2016).
• Professor Noam Lubell is the author of the book ‘Extraterritorial Force Against Non-state Actors’ (Oxford University Press).
• Professor John Preston is the author of 'Grenfell Tower: Preparedness, Race and Disaster Capitalism' (2019) where he uses Marxist value critique and Critical Race Theory to argue that disaster preparedness increasingly works against working-class and racialised populations.
• Dr Sean Seeger is the author of the book ‘Nonlinear Temporality in Joyce and Walcott’ (Routledge, 2017). He's also published an article on 'Dystopian Literature and the Sociological Imagination'.