Conversations with Richard Fidler

I was pleased to be invited back to the ABC studios a few days ago to chat with Richard Fidler as part of Conversations. The last time I was on the show was five years ago, just after the release of Explore Everything. My recent appearance was a great chance to talk about my new research with Preppers in-depth. I look forward to returning at the end of the project to see how my predictions pan out. I was also happy to recently be part of the 10th anniversary of the Talking Walking Podcast. I walked (and talked) with Andrew...

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USyd Fellowship Reading List

As a follow-up to my last post, one of the things I really wanted to do with my USyd fellowship time was to read more. I asked my friends and colleagues to recommend to me a philosophy text (broadly defined) that was influential to them or that changed the way they thought. I collated those responses below. For the next 2 years, I’m going to work my way through these 85 books. If anyone is interested in following along, here is a download link to almost all of them. Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble Junichiro Tanizaki, In Praise...

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Life as a University of Sydney Fellow

There is no occupation so sweet as scholarship; scholarship is the means of making known to us, while still in this world, the infinity of matter, the immense grandeur of nature, the heavens, the lands and the seas. Scholarship has taught us piety, moderation, greatness of heart; it snatches our souls from darkness and shows them all things, the high and the low, the first, the last and everything in between; scholarship furnishes us with the means of living well and happily; it teaches us how to spend our lives without discontent and without vexation.        ...

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Bundian Way Project

I recently participated in a two-day exhibition at the National Art School in Sydney. The exhibition was built around a long weekend spent walking part of the Bundian Way Aboriginal Trail, a 365km track which follows an ancient Aboriginal route from Mt Kosciuszko to the coast in NSW. The project was coordinated by the arts collective Fugitive Moments (Barnaby Lewer and Tristan Derátz) and as they write on the project website, the trail ‘follows – and displaces – the traces of human movement, commerce and war for over 40,000 years. It is the first Aboriginal pathway to be listed on...

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Secret Tunnels

Earlier this year I was invited to write the foreword to Antony Clayton’s new book Secret Tunnels of England: Folklore and Fact. The invitation came from a talk we gave together in the Salon for the City series, which I’d highly recommend attending if you enjoy drinking cocktails in fragile tea cups and listening to historical lectures. Antony was kind enough to let me re-post my foreword text here, which I hope will inspire you to go read the whole book, which is not only engaging but gorgeous!   I studied for my PhD at Royal Holloway, University of London,...

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More Immigration Horror Stories

Since publishing my piece yesterday at The Conversation about the Conservatives’ war on foreign intellectuals in Britain, I have been flooded with phone calls and emails from people with their own stories of dealing with the constantly shifting goalposts set out by the UK Home Office. One American sent me a photo of a teabag chucked into a glass of water, a nod to the American Revolution and the fight over “taxation without representation”. He was clearly frustrated not to be voting today, despite paying taxes here for over two years. Another called me to say that they had not had any specific...

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Why I’m resisting the Conservatives’ war on foreign intellectuals in Britain

Academics doing battle with the Home Office. Photo via FotograFFF/www.shutterstock.com  Earlier this year, the UK lost a great scholar through a “soft deportation” when Miwa Hirono voluntarily left the country after an extended legal battle with the Home Office that left her and her family financially and psychologically exhausted. Hirono, a Japanese citizen, worked for the University of Nottingham for nearly seven years as an expert in UK-China relations, had a child born in the UK, and had every intention of permanently residing here. However, she had been “absent” from the UK for more than 180 days over the past five...

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Labyrinth Review

In the new issue of the Times Literary Supplement (20th March 2015), I have reviewed Mark Wallinger’s new book Labyrinth: A Journey Through London’s Underground.  The piece was edited down a bit for print. Below is the unedited text for those interested. Louise Coysh, editor LABYRINTH A journey through London’s underground by Mark Wallinger 320pp. Art/Books Publishing. £24.99. 978 1 908970 16 9 In 2010, Banksy’s agent placed an advertisement inside London Bridge station for his new film Exit Through the Gift Shop. The print depicted a young boy praying in front of a brush and bucket under a...

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Experimental Geographies

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been putting together a 3rd year undergraduate course here at the University of Southampton. This is my first time putting together an entire course and I’m pleased to say I’ve finally got a draft syllabus together. I’m now going to start working on the individual lectures. It looks like it’s spinning up to be an interesting term here on the south...

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