What does the futures of monster theory hold? And what stories can we tell about its origins? The Monsters of the Anthropocene Halloween symposium ‘Unruly Origins, Strange Futures’ explores the pasts and futures of thinking with monsters through art, politics, storytelling and scholarship.
The symposium is free. Find the programme and sign up here.
speakers
Katja Aglert is an independent artist with a transdisciplinary artistic practice situated in feminist and more-than-human imaginaries. Her projects has been exhibited widely in venues such as Foundation Fiminco, Romanville, France (2021); Solyanka State Gallery, Moscow, Russia (2019); Fotogalleriet, Oslo, Norway (2016); Biologiska museet, Stockholm (2016); Museum och Contemporary Art, Santiago, Chile (2015); Marabouparken, Stockholm (2014). Her work has been featured in journals and publications such as Karib: Nordic Journal for Caribbean Studies, in the Special Collection: Poetics of Space – Archipelagos and Wanderings, edited by Tiina Peil and Michael Wiedorn (2021); Animal Places: Lively Cartographies of Human-Animal Relations, edited by Jacob Bull, Tora Holmberg and Cecilia Åsberg (Routledge, 2019) and OEI Naturbegreppet [EKOEI] #75/76, edited by Johan redin (2017). She is a professor of art at Tema Genus, Gender Studies at Linköping University, Sweden, and the artistic leader and co-director of The Seed Box – an environmental humanities collaboratory.
Marietta Radomska, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in Environmental Humanities at Linköping University (Unit Gender Studies), SE; director of The Eco- and Bioart Lab and Network; co-director of The Posthumanities Hub; and co-founder of Queer Death Studies Network. She works at the intersection of the posthumanities, environmental humanities, continental philosophy, feminist theory, queer death studies, visual culture and contemporary art. She is the author of Uncontainable Life: A Biophilosophy of Bioart (2016) and has published in Australian Feminist Studies; Somatechnics; Women, Gender & Research, Artnodes, Environment and Planning E, among others.
Not Lone Wolf (collective)
Academic researchers have never done their research in isolation. A range of interrelationships with human and non-human beings not only shape, but enable our research. However, these relationships are rarely explicitly acknowledged, reflected upon or written into the research process, and are often seen as illegitimate or not valued appropriately. Research participants and co-researchers, unborn children, children of all ages, parents, partners, friends, personal life stages, challenging research topics and a range of non-human and more-than-human beings including pets, glaciers, gardens, place, ancestors and Country, all shape the way we do our research. They remind us that being a researcher is not the task of a Lone Wolf – an imaginary, typically cis male able bodied, white academic, individual and individualised. Rather, these beings remind us that there are multiple legitimate and incredibly valuable ways of doing academic research.
NLW speakers:
June Rubis: As a former conservation biologist, June Rubis has about twelve years in hands-on wildlife conservation fieldwork in both Indonesian and Malaysian Borneo. She has also worked on Indigenous land rights and environmental issues in collaboration with Indigenous activists and NGOs in Malaysian Borneo (Sarawak and Sabah). She has carried out research on Bidayuh ritual revitalization, under the guidance of her Bidayuh father and relatives, linking the revitalization with environmental change in her home state of Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo. Much of her approach to her work follows the teachings of her parents, including her late Bidayuh father, following his own parents’ journey as traditional Bidayuh priest and priestess. Her recent PhD research examined a decolonial Indigenous approach to orang utan conservation in Sarawak. She holds both an MSc in Environmental Change and Management and a DPhil (Ph.D.) in Geography & Environment, from the University of Oxford.
Filipa Soares: I am an anthropologist and environmental geographer at the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon. My research has been focused on the politics and histories of wildlife conservation, including rewilding, and forest management in Europe (Portugal and the UK), as well as the underlying relations between humans and nonhumans (e.g., wolves, birds of prey, owls, large herbivores, fire, wind farms). I hold a DPhil (Ph.D.) in Geography and the Environment, from the University of Oxford.
Sandie Suchet-Pearson: I am an associate professor in Geography and Planning at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. My research and teaching experiences over the last 25 years have been in the area of Indigenous rights and environmental management. My current work focuses on Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination in the context of cultural tourism in North East Arnhem Land, northern Australia and caring-as-Country in western Sydney.
Patricia MacCormack is Professor of Continental Philosophy at Anglia Ruskin University Cambridge. She has published extensively on philosophy, feminism, queer and monster theory, animal abolitionist activism, ethics, art and horror cinema. She is the author of Cinesexuality (Routledge 2008) and Posthuman Ethics (Routledge 2012) and the editor of The Animal Catalyst (Bloomsbury 2014), Deleuze and the Animal (EUP 2017), Deleuze and the Schizoanalysis of Cinema (Continuum 2008) and Ecosophical Aesthetics (Bloomsbury 2018). Her new book is The Ahuman Manifesto: Activisms for the End of the Anthropocene (Bloomsbury 2020)
Regina Kanyu Wang is a writer, researcher, and editor, currently pursuing her PhD under the CoFUTURES project at the University of Oslo. She writes science fiction, nonfiction and academic essays in both Chinese and English. She has won multiple Xingyun Awards for Global Chinese SF (Chinese Nebula), SF Comet International SF Writing Competition, Annual Best Works of Shanghai Writers’ Association and more. Her stories can be found in her individual collections Of Cloud and Mist 2.2 and The Seafood Restaurant, various magazines, and anthologies. Her critical works can be found in Vector, Modern Chinese Literature Criticism, Wenyi Daily, and forthcoming in Routledge Handbook of CoFuturisms. She is co-editor of the Chinese SF special issue of Vector, the critical journal of BSFA, The Way Spring Arrives and Other Stories, an all-women-and-non-binary anthology of Chinese speculative fiction, and the English version of The Making of The Wandering Earth: A Film Production Handbook. When she is not working on science fiction related projects, you can find her practicing krav maga, kali, boxing and yoga, or cooking various dishes.
Susanne M Winterling is an artist and professor of fine art and works across a range of media to explore the sentient economy, cultures and transformations of elements and materialisations. Forms and materials trace species and the elements in today’s challenging geopolitical context. Winterling’s practice reflects upon political as well as aesthetic entanglements and power structures among human/ animal/ matter. Since 2018 the artistic research project Planetary sensing: navigation below the surface circles with bioluminescence on topics of counterbalancing social and environmental violence with art as well as bio-sensing and citizen science in collaboration with an interdisciplinary group and network funding from the Norwegian Artistic Research Program and tba 21 Academy.
The Monster Network 