Researchers in the Technological Life cluster are investigating how different forms of collective life are shaped by increasingly complex entanglements of geological, biological, and technological processes.
Members of the cluster explore how a range of nonhuman processes and things (e.g. plants, animals, data, microbes, floods, infrastructure, and stratospheric winds) participate in shaping forms of life that link the planetary with the bodily. In tracing these links, our research aims to produce novel insights into the natures of the lived environments in which urgent political and ethical issues are conditioned, contested, and governed. Central to our work is a concern with the problem of how different capacities for life and for living are facilitated and in some cases diminished by experiments with new knowledges, practices, and technologies.
Research in the cluster is animated by three lines of questioning.
| Environments: | How is the nature and matter of different environments imagined, experienced, and transformed through particular practices and technologies? What kinds of knowledges allow environments to be rendered political and governable as matters of public concern? Whose views, experiences, and ethics matter in the identification and resolution of environmental controversies? |
| Bodies: | How are the geographies of life extending across a range of different human and non-human bodies? How are human, animal, microbial, viral and plant lives viewed and valued by different political, scientific, social and cultural agents? How are new technologies transforming the capacities of bodies to affect and be affected by their environments, and with what consequences? |
| Mobilities: | What does it mean to live in a world organized around the movement of objects, bodies, ideas, and elements? What role do mobile infrastructures play in the transition to new forms of environmental awareness and ecological politics? How adequate are our knowledge practices to the task of understanding worlds in movement? |
News and Research Highlights
Jamie Lorimer on the Probiotic Planet Jamie Lorimer, Professor of Environmental Geography, talks to Table Debates about his latest book 'The Probiotic Planet: Using Life to Manage Life' in this new Feed podcast. Listen now. 03/12/20 03 December 2020 - 
read more + Far from simple: Orangutan conservation poses ethical dilemmas Could it ever be better to keep a wild-born, formerly captive orangutan in a cage? Should they be released into the 'wild'? And if so, which wild? Dr Alexandra Palmer considers the ethical questions raised by orangutan conservation in her latest blog post. 02/11/20 02 Novemberber 2020 - 
read more + Meet Jamie Lorimer Professor of Environmental Geography 25/11/19 25 Nov 2019 - 
read more + Fast forwarding thinking on a Net Zero Oxfordshire The TSU's Gordon Stokes and Sam Hampton have consulted Oxford Friends of the Earth on sustainable transport and energy science, for their 'Fast Forward Oxfordshire' report. The publication sets out a vision of sustainable Net Zero Oxfordshire in 2040, and supports this with policy recommendations and examples of sustainable intiatives already happening around the world.
Events
Latest Publications
- Plyushteva, A. (2023) Affording mobility: Attending to the socio-material affordances of transport un/affordability. Journal of Transport Geography.
- Welden, E.A. (2023) Conceptualising Multispecies Collaboration: Work, animal labour and Nature-based Solutions. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers.
- Hamper, J. and Perrota, M. (2023) Blurring the divide: Navigating the public/private landscape of fertility treatment in the UK. Health and Place, 80. 102992.
- Grasham, C.F., Hoque, S.F., Korzenevica, M., Fuente, D., Goyol, K., Verstraete, L., Mueze, K., Tsadik, M., Zeleke, G., and Charles, K.J. (2022) Equitable urban water security: Beyond connections on premises. Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability.
- Korzenevica, M., Johnson, Z., Zerihun, Z., Gebreegzabher, A., Mebrahtu, S., Hoque, S.F., Grasham, C.F. and Charles, K.J. (2022) Negotiating spaces of marginality and independence: on women entrepreneurs within Ethiopian urbanization and water precarity. World Development, 158. 105966.
