Emeritus Professor Vicki Kirby

Emeritus Professor Vicki Kirby

Emeritus Professor

BA, Dip Ed, MA Hons Prelim. First Class (University of Sydney); PhD (University of California Santa Cruz)

Arts, Design & Architecture (ADA)
School of Social Sciences

Vicki Kirby is Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Anthropology in the School of Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, UNSW, Visiting Professorial Fellow, Institute for Art and Architecture, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

The motivating question behind Vicki’s research is the puzzle of the nature/culture, body/mind, body/technology division, because so many political and ethical decisions are configured in terms of this opposition. Vicki is also interested in ‘the language question’ - what is language, and how does the way we answer that question define the human and inaugurate the political?

Vicki’s fascination with origins and foundations, or what grounds an argument, has remained an enduring provocation in her work.  Drawing on a rich interdisciplinary tradition in Australian feminisms and critical theory more generally, she explores the sometimes hidden politics of everyday life.  Her particular interest is embodiment and matter, and she brings feminism and deconstruction into conversation in order to shift the terms of these inquiries.  We know that cultural meanings are biologically registered, producing symptoms and signs, but what ‘language’ enables these interior communications and how do they differ from a conventional notion of language? Can the nature/culture division be sustained if flesh is literate; if it calculates? Is the special status accorded the human considerably qualified if life’s animations are forms of reading and writing?

Investigating such questions, Vicki’s research explores the uncanny resonance between poststructural understandings of ‘the life of language’ and scientific evidence about ‘the language of life.’ The international acclaim received by Telling Flesh: the substance of the corporeal (1997, Routledge), which explores the semiological capacities of flesh, is evidence of the unique and fertile provocations in this line of inquiry. Telling Flesh is a book of exceptional significance and merit… original… a brilliant philosophical critique” (Mutman: 1999). ‘Kirby takes herself and her readers on a trip where even Derrida only sometimes dares to go. As with all the best scholarship, or writing of any stripe… it keeps generating insights and wonders through multiple readings’ (Weinstone: 2000). Eleven reviews.

Judith Butler: Live Theory (2006, Continuum) explores the question of materiality, language and the discursive and offers a sustained criticism of one of the giants of contemporary feminist and political theory. The book illuminates how a surreptitious recuperation of the nature/culture division can inform work that actively eschews the opposition, and suggests how this division can be engaged differently. ‘Vicki Kirby’s presentation of Butler is… thoughtful and rigorous, generous yet insubordinate… The level of scholarship here is superior. The reader is witness to a stimulating dialogue between two talented scholars… Kirby offers many excellent criticisms of and questions about Butler’s ideas that warrant development elsewhere’ (Kachra: 2007). Five reviews.

(2011) Judith Butler: Pensamiento en Acción trans. Diego Luis Sanromán Peña, Barcelona, Edicions Bellaterra, pp. 208. 

Quantum Anthropologies: Life at Large (2011 Duke) consolidates the innovative trajectory of Kirby’s work.  How is scholarship in the humanities already substantively implicated in the sciences? What challenges do we confront if Derrida’s ‘no outside of text’ is read as ‘no outside of Nature’? The anonymous manuscript readers for Duke University Press confirm the book’s path-finding significance. Reader #1: ‘Vicki Kirby has developed a uniquely challenging and amplifying response to deconstruction as a means of offering new reflections on nature, embodiment, materialism, and science… There have been few Derrida commentators who have been able to combine an extreme intelligence about, attention and sensitivity to Derrida’s work, with this kind of extensive challenge to it’. Reader #2: ‘Kirby is one of the foremost intellectuals of our time. …a creative and original thinker who offers profound challenges to some of our most cherished beliefs. She is a scholar whose contributions are not only making a significant impact now, but promise to do so for some time to come’. 6 reviews.

 What if Culture was Nature all Along? Editor (2017 (hb) 2018 (pb) Edinburgh University Press

What If Culture Was Nature All Along?is a collection of 11 essays curated by Vicki Kirby that proves that there is still something new to be said about feminist new materialisms and that there is value in facing this topic anew … Kirby's anthology not only adds to ongoing debates, but also puts feminist new materialisms into action, and by doing so she offers an insight into what feminist new materialisms can still do (and how)… The starting point for all the essays in this collection is an engaged and generous approach, full of curiosity and unable to be satisfied with shaky theoretical constructions. Thus, although essays engage in different topics and develop unique perspectives, the common attitude [is] of affirmative critique and genuine concern.- Monika Rogowska-Stangret, University of Warsaw, Hypatia

Vicki Kirby has already produced an impressive corpus on the relations amonglife, matter and inscription. This new volume takes her unique and formidable mode of argument to a new level. For Kirby, both our conceptions of nature/culture and our notion of ‘turns’ - back to reality, materialism or life - require a more complex and intellectually more generous approach to relations and mediations. Drawing powerfully from recent work in feminist and critical theory this book will redefine the ways in which we think about life, the human and the posthuman.- Claire Colebrook, Penn State University 2 Reviews

 

Vicki has held many teaching and research positions across Europe, the United States, Australia, New Zealand and India, most recently, Erasmus Mundus Professor Utrecht University and Visiting Professor, Winter School, Institute of Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Bern University. Her work is being archived by Brown University “since your work has been crucial to developments in your field and to feminist theory in general.” She was Chief Investigator of an ARC Discovery Project Grant, ‘The Life of Language and the Language of Life’ (2006-2009) $120,000; guest edited a special issue of Australian Feminist Studies in 2008, and is currently working on a manuscript provisionally titled, Human Exceptionalism on the Line.

She has an international reputation in the fields of deconstruction, feminism and new materialism, and regularly receives invitations to keynote and teach masterclasses. Invitations over the last 6 years include: Guangzhou University; Utrecht University; The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf; Somatechnics Conference, Southern Cross and University of Queensland; Department of Gender and Cultural Studies, Sydney University; Institute of Art and Architecture, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna; La Trobe University; Ghent University; Åbo Akademi University, Turku Finland; Maastricht University; Emory University; Franklin Humanities Institute Duke University; Yale University; Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Berlin; Europa Universität,Viadrina, Frankfurt/Oder; Institute of Advanced Study in the Humanities and the Social Sciences, Bern University.

Vicki is currently a Founding Member of the Advisory Board Digital Semiotics Encyclopedia; A member of Terra Critica; International Editorial Advisory Board Borderlands journal; Editorial Board, New Materialisms Series, Edinburgh University Press; Editorial Associate, Critical Posthumanisms; Advisory Board, Itineration: Cross-Disciplinary Studies in Rhetoric, Media, and Culture; Advisory Panel, Wasteflow Project, Oxford University Centre for the Environment; Science Advisory Committee, Semiotica, filosofi, arte, letteratura, Athanor Book Series, Milan; Editorial Board Member: New Critical Humanities; Editorial Board Member: “Experimental Practices” Series, Brill; International Advisory BoardCatalyst: Feminism, Theory, and Technoscience.

Mobile
0400783600
Phone
+61-400783600
Location
Room 229 Morven Brown
  • Books | 2011
    Kirby V, 2011, Judith Butler: Pensamiento en Accion, 1st, Edicions Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain, http://www.quelibroleo.com/libros/judith-butler-pensamiento-en-accion
    Books | 2011
    Kirby V, 2011, Quantum Anthropologies: Life at large, 1st, Duke University Press, Durham, http://www.dukeupress.edu/Catalog/ViewProduct.php?productid=19894
    Books | 2006
    Kirby V, 2006, Judith Butler: Live Theory, First, Continuum Publishing Co, London and New York
    Books | 1997
    Kirby V, 1997, TELLING FLESH The substance of the corporeal, Original, Routledge Press, New York
  • Book Chapters | 2022
    Kirby V; Higgins M, 2022, 'In Conversation with Vicki Kirby: Deconstruction, Critique, and Human Exceptionalism in the Anthropocene', in Reimagining Science Education in the Anthropocene, Springer Nature, pp. 331 - 347, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79622-8_21
    Book Chapters | 2022
    Kirby V, 2022, 'Language', in Herbrechter S; Callus I; Rossini M; Grech M; de Bruin-Molé M; Müller C (ed.), Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1 - 24, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42681-1_
    Book Chapters | 2021
    Kirby V, 2021, 'Vital Technologies: the involvements of ‘the intra’', in Jauernik C; Tschapeller W (ed.), INTRA! INTRA!: Towards an INTRA SPACE, Sternberg Press/MIT Press, Berlin, pp. 102 - 121, http://dx.doi.org/10.21937/9783956795893.5
    Book Chapters | 2021
    Kirby V, 2021, 'at home with the alien that I am', in Van Gelder P; Hamilton JM; Reid S; Neimanis A (ed.), Feminist Queer Anticolonial Propositions For Hacking The Anthropocene: Archive, Open Humanities Press, London, pp. 20 - 24
    Book Chapters | 2020
    Kirby V, 2020, 'wild allusions: ecologies of agency', in McEoin E; Maidment S; Patty M; Wallis P (ed.), National Gallery of Victoria Triennial 2020 (5 volumes), Council of Trustees of the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, pp. 184 - 193, https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/exhibition/triennial-2020/
    Book Chapters | 2019
    Kirby V, 2019, '‘Feminisms, reading, postmodernisms’: Rethinking complicity', in Feminism and the Politics of Difference, pp. 20 - 34, http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780429039010-2
    Book Chapters | 2018
    Kirby V, 2018, 'Butler, Judith', in di Leo JR (ed.), The Bloomsbury Handbook of Literary and Cultural Theory, Bloomsbury Academic, London, New York, pp. 399 - 400
    Book Chapters | 2018
    Kirby V, 2018, 'Quantum Anthropology', in Braidotti R; Hlavajova M (ed.), Posthuman Glossary, edn. Theory Series, pp. 374 - 375
    Book Chapters | 2018
    Kirby V, 2018, 'Un/Limited Ecologies', in Fritsch M; Lynes P; Wood D (ed.), Eco-Deconstruction: Derrida and Environmental Philosophy, edn. 1st, Fordham University Press, New York, NY, pp. 121 - 140, https://www.fordhampress.com/9780823279500/eco-deconstruction/
    Book Chapters | 2018
    Kirby V, 2018, 'Wielogłosy o nowych materializmach', in Cielemęcka O; Rogowska-Stangret M (ed.), Feminist new materialisms: situated cartographies/ Feministyczne nowe materializmy: usytuowane kartografie, edn. N/A, e-naukowiec, Lublin, Poland, pp. 258, 288 - 260, 290
    Book Chapters | 2018
    Kirby V, 2018, '“Autoimmunity: the political state of nature”', in Herbrechter S; Jamieson M (ed.), Autoimmunities, Routledge, London
    Book Chapters | 2017
    Kirby V, 2017, 'Embodiment', in Ivan Callus ; Stefan Herbrechter ; Manuela Rossini (ed.), Genealogy of The Posthuman, Critical Posthumanisms, e-site, pp. N/A - N/A, http://criticalposthumanism.net/genealogy/embodiment/
    Book Chapters | 2017
    Kirby V, 2017, 'Foreword: Where to Begin?', in Kirby V (ed.), What If Culture Was Nature All Along?, edn. New Materialisms, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, pp. viii - xii, https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-what-if-culture-was-nature-all-along.html
    Book Chapters | 2017
    Kirby V, 2017, 'Matter out of Place: ‘New Materialism’ in Review', in Kirby V (ed.), What If Culture Was Nature All Along?, edn. New Materialisms, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, pp. 1 - 25, https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-what-if-culture-was-nature-all-along.html
    Book Chapters | 2017
    Kirby V, 2017, 'Natural Convers(at)ions: Or, What if Culture Was Really Nature', in Queer Feminist Science Studies A Reader, edn. Feminist Technosciences, University of Washington Press, Washington, pp. 268 - 281
    Book Chapters | 2017
    Kirby V, 2017, 'When all that is solid melts into language', in Butler Matters: Judith Butler's Impact on Feminist and Queer Studies, pp. 41 - 56
    Book Chapters | 2012
    Kirby V, 2012, 'Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity', in Newall DD; Poke G (ed.), Fifty Key Texts in Art History, edn. 1st, Routledge, Oxford, pp. 227 - 231, http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415497701/
    Book Chapters | 2010
    Kirby V, 2010, 'Deconstruction', in Rossini M; Clarke B (ed.), Routledge companion to literature and science, edn. 1st ed., Routledge, London, pp. 287 - 297, http://www.amazon.com/Routledge-Companion-Literature-Science-Companions/dp/0415495253/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1306503264&sr=8-1#reader_0415495253
    Book Chapters | 2008
    Kirby V, 2008, '(Con)founding `the Human` Incestuous Beginnings', in Giffney N; Hird MJ (ed.), Queering the Non/Human, edn. First, Ashgate, Aldershot, pp. 35 - 54
    Book Chapters | 2008
    Kirby V, 2008, 'Natural Convers(at)ions: or, what if Culture was really Nature all along?', in Alaimo S; Hekman S (ed.), Material Feminisms, edn. Original, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, USA, pp. 214 - 236
    Book Chapters | 2006
    Kirby V, 2006, '`Culpability and the Double-Cross: Irigaray with Merleau-Ponty`', in Olkowski D; Weiss G (ed.), Feminist Interpretations of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, edn. Original, Pennsylvania State University Press, Pennsylvania, USA, pp. 127 - 145
    Book Chapters | 2005
    Kirby V; Blumenfeld WJ; Breen MS; Baer S; Brookey RA; Hall L; Shail R; Wilson N, 2005, ''There Is A Person Here’: An Interview with Judith Butler”', in Breen MS; Blumenfeld WJ (ed.), Butler Matters: Judith Butler’s Impact on Feminist and Queer Studies, edn. 1st, Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Hampshire, England, pp. 9 - 25
    Book Chapters | 2005
    Kirby V, 2005, 'Out of Africa: `Our Bodies Ourselves?`', in Nnaemeka O (ed.), Female Circumcision and the Politics of Knowledge: African Women in Imperialist Discourses, edn. First and only, Praeger Publishers, Westport, USA, pp. 81 - 96
    Book Chapters | 2005
    Kirby V, 2005, 'When All That Is Solid Melts Into Language: Judith Butler and the Question of Matter', in Breen MS; Blumenfeld WJ (ed.), Butler Matters: Judith Butler’s Impact on Feminist and Queer Studies, edn. 1st, Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Hampshire, England, pp. 41 - 56
    Book Chapters | 2001
    Kirby V, 2001, 'Quantum Anthropologies', in Simmons L; Worth H (ed.), Derrida Downunder, edn. Original, Dunmore Press, New Zealand, pp. 53 - 68
    Book Chapters | 2001
    Kirby V, 2001, 'Theory Incorporated', in Demos V; Segal MT (ed.), An International Feminist Challenge to Theory, JAI Press Inc, Oxford, U.K., pp. 25 - 39
    Book Chapters | 1998
    Kirby V, 1998, 'Cultural difference', in Encyclopaedia of Semiotics, edn. Original, Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 153 - 157
    Book Chapters | 1998
    Kirby V, 1998, 'Value', in Encyclopaedia of Semiotics, edn. Original, Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 624 - 627
    Book Chapters | 1996
    Kirby V, 1996, 'Kopma Noktasinda:Feminizm ve Kliteroris Sunneti', in Oryantalizm, Hegemonya ve Kulturel Fark Istanbul: Iletisim Yayinlari, edn. Original, Illetisim Yaymlari, Istanbul, Turkey
  • Edited Books | 2017
    Kirby V, (ed.), 2017, What If Culture Was Nature All Along?, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-what-if-culture-was-nature-all-along.html
  • Journal articles | 2022
    Kirby V, 2022, 'Who Comes After the Anthropocene?', Síntesis. Revista de Filosofía, 4, pp. 111 - 130, http://dx.doi.org/10.15691/0718-5448Vol4Iss2a360
    Journal articles | 2022
    Kirby V, 2022, '‘Who’ is turning?', Derrida Today, 15, pp. 98 - 105, http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/drt.2022.0284
    Journal articles | 2019
    Kirby V, 2019, 'Telling Flesh: The Body as the Scene of Writing', Figurationen: gender - literatur - kultur, 19, pp. 64 - 80, http://dx.doi.org/10.7788/figu.2018.19.2.64
    Journal articles | 2019
    McLoughlin D, 2019, 'Interview with Vicki Kirby', Theory, Culture and Society, 36, pp. 261 - 271, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0263276419868288
    Journal articles | 2018
    Kirby V; Schrader A; Timár E, 2018, 'How do we do biodeconstruction?', Postmodern Culture, 28, http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/pmc.2018.0021
    Journal articles | 2018
    Kirby V, 2018, 'Originary Humanicity: Locating Anthropos', philoSOPHIA, 8, pp. 43 - 60, http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/phi.2018.0002
    Journal articles | 2018
    Kirby V, 2018, 'Originary différance: “a quantum vitalism”', Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 48, pp. 1 - 5, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.12164
    Journal articles | 2017
    Kirby V, 2017, 'Autoimmunity: the political state of nature', Parallax, 23, pp. 46 - 60, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13534645.2016.1261661
    Journal articles | 2017
    Kirby V, 2017, 'O enigma do valor ou: pour onde começar?', Perspectivas: Revista de Ciencias Sociais (State University of Sao Paulo), 49, pp. 83 - 99, http://seer.fclar.unesp.br/perspectivas/article/view/10982
    Journal articles | 2016
    Kirby V, 2016, 'Grammatology: A Vital Science', Derrida Today, 9, pp. 47 - 67, http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/drt.2016.0119
    Journal articles | 2015
    Kirby V, 2015, 'Transgression: normativity’s self-inversion', Differences: a journal of feminist cultural studies, 26, pp. 96 - 116, http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/10407391-2880618
    Journal articles | 2015
    Kirby VICKI, 2015, 'Visceral politics: an oxymoron?”', BioSocieties, pp. 1 - 4, http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/biosoc.2015.40
    Journal articles | 2014
    Kirby V, 2014, 'Human Exceptionalism on the Line', Substance: : a review of theory and literary criticism, 43, pp. 50 - 67, http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/sub.2014.0028
    Journal articles | 2013
    Kirby V, 2013, 'Initial Conditions', Differences: a journal of feminist cultural studies, 23, pp. 197 - 205, http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/10407391-1892934
    Journal articles | 2011
    Kirby V; Wilson E, 2011, 'Feminist conversations with Vicki Kirby and Elizabeth A. Wilson', Feminist Theory, 12, pp. 227 - 234, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1464700111404289
    Journal articles | 2011
    Kirby V, 2011, 'Anthropomorphism, Again', Cr-The New Centennial Review, 10, pp. 251 - 268, http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/ncr.2010.0038
    Journal articles | 2010
    Kirby V, 2010, 'Original Science: nature deconstructing itself', Derrida Today, Vol. 3, pp. 201 - 220, http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/drt.2010.0204
    Journal articles | 2009
    Kirby V, 2009, 'Tracing life: `La Vie La Mort`', Cr-The New Centennial Review, 9, pp. 107 - 126
    Journal articles | 2008
    Kirby V, 2008, 'Subject to Natural Law: A Meditation on the `Two Cultures` Problem', Australian Feminist Studies, 23, pp. 5 - 17, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08164640701827162
    Journal articles | 2006
    Kirby V, 2006, 'Review of Dominique Janicaud`s `On the Human Condition`', Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Sept 1, pp. 1 - 4
    Journal articles | 2005
    Kirby V, 2005, 'Ethical Revisions of the Flesh: Irigaray with Merleau-Ponty', Journal of Contemporary Thought, 21, pp. 7 - 23
    Journal articles | 2005
    Kirby V, 2005, 'Just Figures? Forensic Clairvoyance, Mathematics and the Language Question', Formules de la poesie. Etudes sur Ponge, Leiris, Char et Du Bouchet., 34, pp. 3 - 26, http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/sub.2005.0033
    Journal articles | 2004
    Kirby V, 2004, 'Enumerating Language: `The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics`', Configurations, 11, pp. 417 - 439, http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/con.2004.0028
    Journal articles | 2004
    Kirby V, 2004, 'Humanism, Posthumanism and the Sociological Enterprise', NEXUS, pp. 8 - 9
    Journal articles | 2002
    Kirby V, 2002, 'When all that is solid melts into language: Judith Butler and the Question of Matter', International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies, 7(4), pp. 265 - 280
    Journal articles | 2001
    Kirby V, 2001, '`There is a person here`: An interview with Judith Butler. Compiled by V.Kirby et.al.', International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies, pp. 7 - 24
    Journal articles | 1999
    Kirby V, 1999, 'Human nature', Australian Feminist Studies, 14, pp. 19 - 29, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08164649993308
    Journal articles | 1999
    Kirby V, 1999, 'Turning corporeal', Semiotic Review of Books, 10, pp. 4 - 6
    Journal articles | 1998
    Kirby V, 1998, 'Review- Warren Shapiro and Uli Linke (eds.) Denying biology: essays on gender and pseudo procreation', TAJA - the Australian Journal of Anthropology, pp. 122 - 124
    Journal articles | 1991
    Kirby V, 1991, 'Corporeal Habits: Addressing Essentialism Differently', Hypatia, 6, pp. 4 - 24, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1527-2001.1991.tb00253.x
    Journal articles | 1989
    Kirby V, 1989, 'Capitalising Difference: Feminism and Anthropology', Australian Feminist Studies, 4, pp. 1 - 24, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08164649.1989.9961631
    Journal articles | 1988
    Kirby V, 1988, 'REVIEW', Oceania, 58, pp. 315 - 316, http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/j.1834-4461.1988.tb02290.x
    Journal articles | 1987
    Kirby V, 1987, 'On the cutting edge: Feminism and clitoridectomy', Australian Feminist Studies, 2, pp. 35 - 55, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08164649.1987.9961564
  • Conference Presentations | 2019
    Kirby V, 2019, '“the reality of the limit or limit-text of culture is rarely theorised...”', presented at Terra Critica IV, King’s College London., 04 July 2019 - 05 July 2019, http://terracritica.net/publications/#2019

Currently holds a Peek Research Grant, Visiting Professorial Fellow, Institute for Art and Architecture, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. 

Research Areas

Poststructuralism, feminist theory, posthumanism, new materialism, technology and science studies, biophilosophy

Current Research Projects

Vital Translations: how language, biology and physical matter are inextricably entangled in all processes of translation

Recent findings in the sciences challenge the belief that language is a strictly human achievement. As the material stuff of life appears to transform itself through translative processes, the received meanings of such notions as literacy and even agency have been extended. Consequently, the difference between culture and nature, information and substance, or even subject and object is increasingly unclear. This project will link research sites that destabilise the tenets of anthropocentrism. Can these findings help us to reconceive our place in Nature?

Current Editorial and Advisory Boards 

Vicki is currently a Founding Member of the Advisory Board Digital Semiotics Encyclopedia; a member of Terra Critica; International Editorial Advisory Board Borderlands journal; Editorial Board, New Materialisms Series, Edinburgh University Press; Editorial Associate, Critical Posthumanisms; Advisory Board, Itineration: Cross-Disciplinary Studies in Rhetoric, Media, and Culture; Advisory Panel, Wasteflow Project, Oxford University Centre for the Environment; Science Advisory Committee, Semiotica, filosofi, arte, letteratura, Athanor Book Series, Milan; Editorial Board Member: New Critical Humanities; Editorial Board Member: “Experimental Practices” Series, Brill; International Advisory BoardCatalyst: Feminism, Theory, and Technoscience.

Vicki was invited faculty at the Winter School: Institute of Advanced Study in the Humanities and the Social Sciences, Bern University in 2015, and an Erasmus Mundus Scholar at Utrecht University in 2013. She was Chief Investigator of an ARC Discovery Project Grant, ‘The Life of Language and the Language of Life’ (2006-2009) $120,000; guest edited a special issue of Australian Feminist Studies in 2008, and is currently working on a manuscript provisionally titled, Human Exceptionalism on the Line.  She has an international reputation in the fields of deconstruction, feminism and new materialism, and regularly receives invitations to keynote and take masterclasses.  Invitations over the the last 5 years include: Ghent University; University of Turku Finland; Åbo Akademi University, Turku Finland; Maastricht University; Manchester University; Uppsala University, Sweden; La Trobe University; University of Copenhagen; Utrecht University; The University of Amsterdam; Yale University; Emory University; Duke University; Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Berlin; Europa Universität,Viadrina, Frankfurt/Oder; Institute of Advanced Study in the Humanities and the Social Sciences, Bern University;  Institute of Art and Architecture, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna; Sydney University.   

 

My Research Supervision

Current Postgraduate Research Supervision

UNSW

  • Chelsea van Deventer Australian Postgraduate Award. “The Paradox of Identity: an interdisciplinary study of an undisciplined concept
  • Brooke Jordan Australian Postgraduate Award. "Domestic Violence"

 

Academy of Fine Arts Vienna

  • Christina Jauernik “IntraSpace” 

My Teaching

Undergraduate Teaching: current classes - ARTS2875 Society and Desire; ARTS3871 Forensic Sociology; ARTS4267: Methodologies in the Social Sciences: Questions and Quandaries

Honours Students: 27 Honours students supervised: 22 received Hons Class 1; 9 received the Sol Encel Prize for the best thesis is Sociology; 5 received the University Medal.

Areas of Supervision: Animal studies and posthumanism; the Maori offender; the ethics of care in a palliative setting; system theories and bio-informatics; re-reading the interface between the biological and social through the immunological body; the politics of entanglement; feminism, post-structural theory, political theory; poststructural approaches to the question of spirit; investigating embodiment: feminisms/queer theory, biological discourses; embodied subjectivities and negotiations of purity, Foucault's ontology of power.

I currently supervise 3 PhD students, all with Postgraduate Awards.

Postgraduate Research Completions last 10 years

  • Rebecca Oxley “Attending to fathers with postnatal depression: lived embodiment and bio-graphical systematicity” (2x1s) Awarded PhD June 2015, Best Thesis Prize in Faculty of Social Sciences
  • Ashley Barnwell “Living Truth: a reading in social and sociological hermeneutics.” (2x1s) Awarded PhD November 2014. 
  • Will Johncock “Time and transcendence: the corporeal conditions of time and social synchronisation” (2x1s) Awarded PhD June 2014. 
  • Florence Chiew, "Perceptual plasticity: ecology and the social brain" (2x1s) Awarded PhD 2013, First Place in School of Social Sciences
  • Michelle Jamieson "An investigation of allergy which examines the interface between the biological and social" (3x1s) Awarded PhD 2012.
  • Tamara Popowski, "Transduction, Semiosis, Différance: defining life at the limit" Awarded PhD 2011.
  • Noela Davis, "Material subjectivity: the performative entanglement of biology within sociality" Awarded PhD 2010.
  • Demelza Marlin, "The kenotic structure of Max Weber's the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism: an interdisciplinary approach to secularization" Awarded PhD 2010.
  • Belinda Clayton, "Truth, meaning and representation: Questioning modes of analysis in interpretations of women’s alcohol use" Awarded PhD 2008.
  • Peta Hinton “To see the world in a grain of sand…Thinking Universality and Specificity for a Feminist Politics of Difference” Awarded PhD December, 2007
  • Olivia Harvey “Posthumanism and the Question of Technology” Awarded PhD April, 2005