Posthumanism, Research and the Researcher: Talking with Bridget Egan about Karen Barad

Description

In this keynote lecture I draw on aspects of the learning journey that Bridget and I went on while reading and discussing the work of the feminist physicist Karen Barad (2007) and more broadly when talking together about posthumanist approaches to research. I touch on our conversations about reflection, reflexivity and diffraction as ways of situating researchers in relation to their research. I focus more specifically on diffraction and the relation of diffraction to what Barad terms the research apparatus. Barad is generally positioned as a posthumanist researcher. Posthumanist approaches to research focus on relational ways of understanding the world and widen what can count as elements in research. They also focus on process and the “how” questions of research - how something becomes what it is, how it operates and on the processes of change that result and come to count as knowledge. I use examples from my work in progress to illustrate how I am experimenting with posthumanist approaches as a researcher and some of the challenges that this has posed.

Period	11 Jun 2022
Event title	University of Winchester
Event type	Other
Degree of Recognition	National