Dr Tom Roberts
2015 PhD (Geography) - University of Bristol
2011 MSc (Human Geography: Society & Space) - University of Bristol
2008 BA Hons (Geography) - University of Oxford
Scholarships of AUD$35,000 are available for PhD students who achieved H1 /High Distinction in their UG program and/or have completed a Masters by Research. If you are interested, please contact me at thomas.roberts@adfa.edu.au.
Tom is a cultural geographer based in the School of Science at UNSW Canberra. He joined UNSW Canberra as a Research Associate in 2017 and was promoted to Lecturer in July 2020. Tom read geography as an undergraduate at the University of Oxford, before completing an MSc and PhD at the University of Bristol. Tom has held previous posts as a Research Assistant and Senior Tutor at the University of Melbourne.
Tom's research develops new ways of thinking about the human that are more sensitive to the novel forms of material agency emerging in our increasingly technologically-mediated environments. His work contributes to a number of cutting-edge conceptual debates in cultural geography, including:
- More-than-human geography (e.g., post-humanism, new materialism)
- Relational frameworks in contemporary social science (e.g., assemblage theory, process philosophy)
- Non-anthropocentric theories of subjectivity (e.g., post-phenomenology, affect theory)
- Non-representational research methodologies (e.g., material ethnographies, experimental writing practices)
Tom's work is currently focused on three interrelated research agendas:
1. Questioning the human
Social science research is often based on unacknowledged assumptions about what it means to be human, many of which are outdated, rigid and philosophically suspect. Drawing on cultural geography's rich tradition of thinking critically about 'the human', Tom's research explores and develops approaches to social science that are no longer based on human exceptionalism. This agenda includes work on Spinoza's Ethics, published in the interdisciplinary journal GeoHumanities, as well as engagements with the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, published in Progress in Human Geography, Alfred-North Whitehead's process philosophy, published in Dialogues in Human Geography.
2. Conceptualizing material agency
The second aspect of Tom's research investigates the nonhuman dimensions of social and cultural life through a focus on material agency. Inspired by recent developments in new materialist theory and science and technology studies, Tom's research develops vocabularies that seek to amplify forms of material agency that are often overlooked in contemporary accounts of social and cultural processes. Tom's work in this area includes an experimental ethnographic engagement with the vibrant matter of an IKEA superstore, published in Environment and Planning A; a philosophically-speculative analysis of smart materials and their application in architectural design contexts, published in Environment and Planning D: Society & Space; and a conceptual analysis of assemblage thinking, published in Area.
3. Understanding the social and cultural implications of technological change
Technological change and its impact on the human is an area of particular interest in Tom's research. He has undertaken research on the cultural implications of 3D-printing technologies, published in cultural geographies journal. Tom is also the originator and course convenor of a masters course entitled Understanding Socio-technical Systems: Ideas, Spaces & Cultures. He is currently involved in an interdisciplinary research project investigating how trust is negotiated by everyday users of AI technologies, and has published outcomes of this research in leading journals including Social and Cultural Geography and Travel Behaviour and Society.
- Publications
- Media
- Grants
- Awards
- Research Activities
- Engagement
- Teaching and Supervision
2022 Exploring Trust with Artificial Intelligence (UNSW Canberra AI Seed Fund) - M. Ghasrikhouzani, C. Boshuijzen van Burken, N. Dobos, B. Turnbull, A. Lapworth & T. Roberts
2019 Promoting High Quality Research Papers Scheme (2 papers awarded)
2019 Science at the Shine Dome (supported early-mid career researcher)
My Research Supervision
"Affective dreams and dilemmas: Exploring challenges to gender equality for Iranian women in everyday urban contexts" - Nazanin Hosseinpour (joint supervisor)
"Re-thinking the materiality of colour through the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze" - Eugenia Carlota De La Herran Iriarte (joint supervisor)
"Assemblages, power, and sovereignty in new materialist geopolitics: Transboundary rivers in the borderlands of postcolonial South Asia" - Raj Kaithwar (secondary supervisor)
My Teaching
Undergraduate:
ZPEM1201 - Human Geography 1A (Course Lecturer)
ZPEM2211 - Special Topic in Geography 2: Human Geographies of Environmental Change (Course Convenor)
ZPEM3208 - Geographic Research Methods (Course Lecturer)
Postgraduate:
ZPEM8310 - Understanding Socio-Technical Systems (Course Convenor)