Available today ๐
www.dukeupress.edu/matterphorics
@mitede
Senior researcher, Faculty of Law, University of Turku, Finland. Docent geography. Westminster Law & Theory Lab Fellow. Affect-Posthumanism-Spatial Justice-Data Justice-Critical Urban Studies. PI of project AgenDa: https://www.utu.fi/agenda
Available today ๐
www.dukeupress.edu/matterphorics
it took some time, but the book forum on Urban Violence: Security, Imaginary, Atmosphere is now out on Dialogues in Urban Research. Thanks to Angeliki Drongiti, Moises Lino e Silva, @mitede.bsky.social and Gabriel Fauveaud for their generous/critical engagement!
journals.sagepub.com/toc/dusa/4/1
Photograph of the outside of the institute, adorned with a large poster of Helvetica letters, in yellow, stating "Beyond the Visual" and in Braille letters too
Four acrylic panels carved and illuminated such as to resemble fireworks
A Henry Moore sculpture, Mother and Child
A view of the gallery with sculptures both on plinths and hanging from the ceiling, suspended in space
Please touch the artworks - Here at the Henry Moore Institute exhibition "Beyond the Visual", "the UK's first major sculpture exhibition in which blind and partially blind practitioners are central to the curatorial process". I find myself listening to the sculptures too, via extensive audio guides.
e-Special Issue - Painting / Knowledge: Georg Simmel, 'On Art Exhibitions' - an early essay by Simmel, published in 1890, reflecting on sociological features of the phenomenon of the art exhibition in European culture at the end of the nineteenth century. (2014) journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
Just published, open access: โSpatial Justice in the Data-Driven City: Toward a Non-representational Paradigmโ in the Annals of the American Association of Geographers www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Today, with AbdouMaliq Simone we are launching the renewed course of our Beyond Inhabitation Lab.
For the coming five years we aim to constitute a platform of collective study on "The Political Re-creations of the Mediterranean and Their Urbanicities."
Info: beyondinhabitation.org/our-new-prog...
Finnish Gender Studies Conference 2026: Rights, Wrongs, and Resistance
University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu campus, 26โ27 November 2026.
Spring is springing in Regentโs Park
#London
Andrea Bardin, Hobbesโs Materialist Agenda: The Politics of Early Modern Science โ @edinburghup.bsky.social, January 2026
edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-hobbes-...
A promotional tile for the new collection in Transactions on Geographies of Responsibility, Care and Repair in Digital Worlds of AI. The graphic shows three images of the globe: a satellite image, an image with cities lit up, and a black outlined globe evocative of the world wide web symbol. This collection was organised by Jessica McLean with Louise Read, Karen Lai, Markus Breines and Sneha Krishnan, with contributions from Margath Walker, Jamie Winders, Yung Au, Katarzyna Cieslik, Nikko Stevens and Jack Jen Gieseking. The image has the Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers logo and the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) logo at the top.
New in TIBG:
'Geographies of Responsibility, Care and Repair in Digital Worlds of AI' guest edited by Jess McLean et al.
This collection features four short pieces reflecting on questions of governance of and accountability for AI.
rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1...
The First Animation That Hayao Miyazaki Directed on His Own: Watch Footage from the Pilot of Yukiโs Sun (1972)
www.openculture.com/2024/07/the-...
Book review of โHydrojusticeโ (Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, 2025) just published in โLaw & Literatureโ www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.....
The book can be found here: www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?b...
A hybrid talk on emotion in law and the high-stakes roles of memory and place. Drawing on 15 years of ethnographic research: what happens when there is no figure in the landscape? How do courts read remorse?
Thu 29 Jan ยท 15:15โ17:00 (UK) ยท stream 15:05
Register bit.ly/4aTdI2Q
The Looki L1 AI wearable
โโฆcontinuously captures a wearer's point of view, promising to advise when to avoid another cup of coffee, to comment on places or objects around you, and to summarize each day in a comic strip.โ
A white consumer drone hovers in front of the viewer
CFP, Please Share - A few days left to submit for "Critical Drone Studies: Drones in Society, Politics, and Culture" (25-26 June 2026, University of Cambridge) - Deadline for proposals: 12 January www.centrefordronesandculture.com/blog/confere...
#drone #cfp #conference #academicSky
Every year, for the past 15 or so, I have made a 'cover art' piece to mark the new year. This year's piece reflects my beloved home in the world, but which I am often away for long stretches. It offers a simple live visualisation of the local sea state racarter.itch.io/twenty-twent... #newYear
Book cover on a purple background. Red Text, white cover. These Books Do Not Exist.
One very last share - I am an inveterate tinkerer with my projects post-release, and since this one attracted more interest than expected, I've decided to update the intro text, which was really rough around the edges. richardacarter.com/these-books-...
Reminder! Call for participation, Planetary Surveillance - the 11th Surveillance Studies Network / Surveillance & Society Conference, Lille, France, 9-12 June 2026.
Deadline: 10 January 2026
#SSN2026 #surveillance
surveillance-studies.net/conference/
ssn2026.sciencesconf.org
Some People Canโt See Mental Images. The Consequences Are Profound
Research has linked the ability to visualize to a bewildering variety of human traitsโhow we experience trauma, hold grudges, and, above all, remember our lives www.newyorker.com/magazine/202... #Mentalimages #PhilosophySky #philsky
Still time to apply, until 19 December
๐
A fox looks up at the camera - a poor quality phone shot, but a large and healthy fox is very much in evidence
Urban encounters
Oh this is just gorgeous!
โData justice made tangible, spatial and actionable: An exploration of everyday data fairness through game makingโ by @dimitrees.bsky.social, @resmini.bsky.social and myself. Available open access here journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
โThe Legal Design Summit 2025 โ Food for thought for research and teachingโ: Short piece on the Legal Design Summit 2025 published in Insights, online media of the Faculty of Law, University of Turku
insights.utu.fi/the-legal-de...
New: Dialogues in Urban Research exploring what it means to think about crisis as urban & how locating crisis in the urban reconfigures relations between eventful & everyday crisis politics, materiality, discourse & movement. Part of a great set of interventions.
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Proceedings of SEFI 2025 are out: zenodo.org/records/1763...
Maps have long been used as tools of colonial power. Now, Inuit maps of the Canadian Arctic are acting as tools of resistance. Also known as counter-mapping, a 2023 Nunatsiavut collaboration began as a way to bridge Inuit knowledge with Western research. buff.ly/J91euLi #NativeAmericanHeritageMonth
Agency in everyday Datafication: Short presentation of a recently started project published in Insights, online media of the Faculty of Law, University of Turku insights.utu.fi/presenting-t...
A conference hosted by the Centre for Drones and Culture Sponsored by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Dates: Thursday 25 June - Friday 26 June 2026 Venue: Jesus College, University of Cambridge From agriculture to logistics, from journalism to delivery, from war to peacebuilding: drones continue to impact the ways we live, work, tell stories, relate to one another, and imagine the future. Debates continue to surround more risky drone developments, such as drones' integration into autonomous, Al-driven warfare, and their illicit use for drugs and weapons delivery into prisons. However, alternative deployments show promise, including unmanned delivery of medicines to remote geographies, surveying of humanitarian crises and environmental disasters, and the creation of fresh visual idioms in photography, cinematography, gaming, and other forms of entertainment. Although the types of drones used in these spaces can be quite different, they often involve imaginaries of situational awareness, technological autonomy, and "distant intimacy" - of humans being physically apart from another person, object, or milieu while robots remain relatively close, at times even enabling affective feelings and cognitive impressions of access and intimacy. While drone studies has tended to treat the use of drones in these spaces separately, the ambition of this conference is to engage in boundary work which moves the field towards a more heterogeneous, as well as normative, understanding of drones in society, politics, and culture: towards a critical drone studies that acknowledges both how individual motivations and creativity shape what a drone is and does, and how such engagements are also influenced by institutions and power. To this end, this is a reflexively interdisciplinary conference that encourages exploratory perspectives on drone pasts, presents, and futures, with a focus on probing the logics and narratives underpinning drone development, proliferation, and acceptance.
Research on broad topics related but not limited to the following are very welcome: Drone wars: algorithmic and Al-enabled violence; drones as justified or non-justified forms of organized / disorganized violence; "new" drone wars, drone-on-drone warfare, Drones and civil liberties: policing; surveillance; predictive politics; protest; regulatory politics; atmospheric commons Drone humanitarianism: "Drones for Good"; drones in rescue and disaster relief; drone use by non-governmental organizations; drones, human rights, and accountability Drone ecologies: climate-human-technology relationships; conservation; biomimetics; environmental monitoring Drones and political economy: commercial drone applications; drone bases, supply chains, logistics, materialities Drone labour: lived experiences involving drones; drone praxis (including ethnographies and autoethnographies); drone technology and constructions of human ability / disability Drone aesthetics: artistic, speculative, and experimental imaginaries regarding unmanned and/or autonomous artefacts; popular drone culture including photography, marketing, filmmaking, drone racing, light shows Contributions from the humanities, social sciences, and beyond are very welcome, as are contributions from those working outside of academic institutions, including practitioner communities, non-profit organizations, government and policy-making organizations, think tanks, as well as artists and creators. Details for Proposals: There are three formats for presentations; please indicate which one you are applying for on the online application. Individual research presentations (max. 15 minutes) Panel presentations (max. 3 speakers x 15 minutes) Creative Showcase presentations: There is limited room for research-grounded creative contributions as part of the conference programming. At this time, we can only accommodate screen-based / touchscreen-based outputs. Deadline for Proposals: 12 January 2026
Critical Drone Studies: Drones in Society, Politics, and Culture
25-26 June 2026 at University of Cambridge.
CFP Link: www.centrefordronesandculture.com/blog/confere...