Welcome to The 2020 Archipelago Lecture: Reflections on Planetary Habitability with Prof. Achille Mbembe, hosted by KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory.
The event takes place on 25th November 2020 at 15:00 – 17:00 online.
“We are so proud to present Prof. Achille Mbembe for this years Archipelago Lecture. He is one of the most influential African philosophers, a political scientist, and a global public intellectual. His books have been translated into 13 languages.
This year the Archipelago Lecture will happen on ZOOM. More information will come, but until then: please mark your calendars and help us to spread the word.
November 25th, at 15:00 CET Reflections on Planetary Habitability Achille Mbembe Research Professor of History and Politics at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research in Johannesburg, South Africa Visiting Professor at Duke University”
Enroll NOW for the PhD course at KTH Gender & Sustainability: Introducing Feminist Environmental Humanities
Coordinators: Cecilia Åsberg (cecilia.asberg@abe.kth.se) and Meike Schalk (meike.Schalk@konstfack.se, meike.schalk@arch.kth.se).
Funded by KTH Sustainability and Equality Office, this course is intended for PhD-students across KTH, within the KTD (Art, Technology, Design PhD-Programme between Konstfack and KTH), SKH and KMH, and the InterGender Research School and its universities.
KTH advertises for a Ragnar Holm postdoc position within a KTH research group.
Are you into STS, history of technology, or techno-humanities, electrics and contact-making (and contact unmakings, such as corrosion, fritting or friction) – and would want do work with us at The Posthumanities Hub of the Department of Philosophy and History? If so please contact Cecilia Åsberg urgently, cecilia.asberg[at]abe.kth.se to discuss this possibility.
NB deadline is extended to March 13, 2020.
Postdoc scholarship from Fysikern fil dr Ragnar Holms stiftelse i Kungliga Tekniska högskolan (The Physicist Dr. Ragnar Holm’s Foundation). Registration number VT-2020-0015
Application period March 2-13 2020
KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm has grown to become one of Europe’s leading technical and engineering universities, as well as a key centre of intellectual talent and innovation. We are Sweden’s largest technical research and learning institution and home to students, researchers and faculty from around the world. Our research and education covers a wide area including natural sciences and all branches of engineering, as well as architecture, industrial management, urban planning, history and philosophy.
Project description
KTH invites applications for a postdoctoral scholarship in honor of the physicist Ragnar Holm (1879-1970), regarded as the scientific founder of electric contacts and their use, and author of the book “Electric Contacts: Theory and Applications”, Hugo Gerbers Förlag 1946.
Qualifications
A successful candidate should have a PhD-degree, be of any nationality, and is expected to join an existing research group at KTH in a relatively broad field, encompassing Engineering Physics and related subjects, or the History of Science and Technology. Preference is given to areas close to Ragnar Holm’s scientific activities or the history thereof, such as the theory of electric contacts, novel applications of electric phenomena in current constrictions as well as friction, wear, fritting, corrosion and tarnish phenomena on electric contacts and related devices, such electromechanical components including MEMS and NEMS, switching contacts, and micro- or nanoelectronic components. Preference is also given to tunneling effects including the more recent physics of single electronics, and carbon contacts including developments on fullerenes and graphene. Finally, preference is given to historical perspectives on relations between industrial and public research as well as engineering and scientific practices.
The duration of the stay is a minimum of one year and a maximum of two years, starting as soon as possible. Postdoctoral studies must be commenced within six months of the date of the decision. The fellowship amounts to 27 500 SEK per month (travel grants included). The scholarship is tax-free. The recipient will also receive the Ragnar Holm plaque in silver. The candidate must obtain an agreement with a senior contact person at KTH expressing that he/she is welcome as postdoc in the research group.
Candidates must have their PhD degree from outside KTH. The period of post-doctoral fellowship at KTH must be started within five years of graduation.
Application
You are the main responsible to ensure that your application is complete according to the ad. Your complete application must be received at KTH no later than 2020-03-13.
The application must include the following documents:
Curriculum vitae (max 2 pages)
A list of the ten most relevant publications
A description of the research the candidate will take part in at KTH (max 2 pages)
Three letters of recommendations, including one from the contact person at KTH
The candidate should also give the full address, including telephone and e-mail, at which he/she can be reached.About the position
Period: minimum of one year and a maximum of two years
Extent: Full-time
Amount of scholarship: 27 500 SEK per month (travel expenses included)
Location: Stockholm
Start date: According to the agreement
Contact
Professor Mats Göthelid (Applicants within Engineering Physics)
Telefon: +46 8 790 41 54
gothelid[at]kth.se
Professor Nina Wormbs (Applicants within History of Science and Technology)
Telefon: +46 8 790 85 83
nina[at]kth.se
Welcome to The Posthumanities Hub Seminar “Toxic/Trans/Bodies” with speakers Andria Nyberg Forshage (writer, poet and theorist based in Stockholm, SE) and dr Wibke Straube (Karlstad University, SE)!
When: Feb 2021
Where: online
More info:
t4t4t4t4t: Fourfold Sex and Trans-Individuation at the End of the World
by Andria Nyberg Forshage
Abstract
At present, 20th-century notions of bodily immune systems modelled as repressive-productive sovereign border controls — and vice versa — are at once being superseded, obsolesced, reinforced and reinvigorated as perhaps never before. At the same time, 21st-century notions of desiring-productive, flexible, molecular immuno-security, already dated as hyper-modern, are being folded into and onto any imaginable kind of body, society, or network. In terms of data, flesh, sex, nation, sense-making, resource extraction, ecological disaster, and ongoing resistance, it is at once a situation of planetary global or civil war, armed peace, state of emergency, and stasis.
Departing from a scenario of societal collapse following transgender bioterrorism on a hormonal and molecular scale as imagined in Torrey Peters’ sci-fi novella Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones (2016), this talk explores the drift of t4t desiring-machines in and through the bodies, farms, fields and factories of contemporary and imagined pharmacopornographic capitalism. Where t4t designates trans for trans desire, in the trans woman commune the logograph becomes self-replicating as desire and senseless noise, burnt and embedded through fleshy, tranimal metabolism.
Connecting the fourfold of subjectivation as theorised by Gilles Deleuze in Foucault (1988) with the t4t fourfold complexes of infectious human-animal-societal undoings, as developed through a reading of Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones, how might t4t4t4t4t be understood as an operation-operator of what Gilbert Simondon has termed the transindividual?
Bio
Andria Nyberg Forshage is a writer, theorist and poet, part of the editorial team for the Paletten Art Journal and currently working with the Knowledge Hub at Public Art Agency Sweden. She has previously presented research at conferences including the First International Trans*Studies Conference at the University of Arizona and The First International Queer Death Studies Conference at Karlstad University. They have a room of their own in Stockholm and a Scorpio rising.
Chemicals, endocrine disruptors and unruly bodies in trans and queer art
by Wibke Straube
Abstract:
In 2018, the post of a vegan group on facebook went viral which argued, that trans and queer bodies are the “damaged” outcome of environmental pollution and endocrine disruption by POP. The post argued further that to lobby for trans and gay rights would mean to support a capitalist, exploitative system of ecological destruction. In response other vegans and this group in particular, dismissed this (cishetero)econormative position and argued this is merely one individual’s opinion. In my talk, I would like to firstly address this “singular” opinion and unpack the idea of the trans and intersex bodies as a result of endocrine disrupting chemical. I will to do this by considering the trans and intersex body as bodily entangled with environmental pollution and toxic contamination (Ah-King/Hayward 2014; DiChiro 2010; Pollock 2016). Secondly, and most centrally, I explore how endocrine disrupting toxins emerge in trans and queer art, intoxicate art practices and artistic bodies, and foster creative pollution that subverts the gender binary norms of EDC discourses and reclaims the toxic body as a monstrous, alien becoming through and within Otherness.
Bio:
Wibke Straube, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Gender Studies, Karlstad University, SE. Their work focuses on intersectional analysis of trans, non-binary and queer embodiment, affective methodologies and the affinities of different socially marginalised bodies, their forms of survival and possibilities to create zones of liveability. They have published in Environmental Humanities and NORMA International Journal for Masculinity Studies, among others. E-mail: wibke.straube[at]kau.se
Welcome to KTH Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment Higher Seminar with Dr Otso Kortekangas on ”Indigenous avant la lettre. The origins and livelihoods of the Sámi in European scholarly thought 1930–1960”
Time: Mon 2020-02-10 13.15 – 14.45
Lecturer: Otso Kortekangas, KTH, Div. History of Science, Technology and Environment and Stockholm University
My project studies the pre-history of the concept indigenous. It shows in
what ways Nordic and European scholars produced the Sámi as precisely indigenous before the term itself was widely in use. When this UN-backed concept gained ground during and following the anti- and postcolonial political processes of the 1960’s, the Nordic Sámi minority could tap in to the global indigenous identity movement.2 This was possible since both the scholarly and, with a certain delay, the popular understanding had gravitated to a direction where the Sámi were considered the original inhabitants of the northern areas of Fennoscandia. Ever since the indigenous label was introduced in the Nordic countries, it has become the first and foremost label and lens through which the Sámi population is studied.
