Dr Debra Shaw
Reader
Department of Architecture & Visual Arts , School Of Architecture, Computing And Engineering
Debra is a member of the programme team administering UEL's Professional Doctorate in Fine Art. She also teaches history and theory on both undergraduate and postgraduate Fine Art and Photography programmes. She is experienced in supervising both Professional Doctorate and PhD candidates to successful completion.
Areas Of Interest
- Critical Posthumanism
- Urban Studies
- Science Fiction
- Contemporary Art & Curation
OVERVIEW
Debra Benita Shaw is Reader in Cultural Theory in the School of Architecture and Visual Arts and a member of the Centre for Research into Social Change and Justice. She has over 20 years' experience of teaching in Arts & Humanities, Cultural Studies and related fields and is known internationally as a critical posthumanist interested in urban studies, feminism and science fiction criticism.
Her textbook, Technoculture: The Key Concepts (2009) is used on science and technology studies courses around the world and she is regularly invited to address symposia on approaches to urban change, posthuman theory and literary criticism. She is also well known for Posthuman Urbanism (2018), a book that interrogates the material and social structures of contemporary cities. With Jeremy Gilbert, she organises the yearly seminar series Culture, Power & Politics.
External roles
Debra serves on the editorial boards of the journals New Formations (Lawrence & Wishart) and Science as Culture (Taylor & Francis) and is also on the advisory board of the Brill Publishers book series Critical Posthumanisms. She is founding editor of the Radical Cultural Studies book series published by Rowman & Littlefield.
CURRENT RESEARCH
Debra's research in the cultural study of science and technology, feminism, critical posthumanism and urban studies is well known in the UK, EU and US and is widely cited in international journals, monographs and edited collections.
She is recognised as an expert in science fiction criticism and has also gained considerable recognition in the fields of architecture and critical geography.
Debra is currently researching the politics of home as a concept which structures subjectivities and material conditions in diverse forms of inhabitation.
PUBLICATIONS
Monographs and edited collections
- Women, Science and Fiction Revisited (Palgrave, 2023)
- Posthuman Urbanism: Mapping Bodies in Contemporary City Space (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2018).
- Radical Space: Exploring Politics & Practice (with Maggie Humm. Rowman & Littlefield International, 2016)
- TechnoDeath: Technology, Death & The Cultural Imagination. Science as Culture 18:3 (2009)
- Technoculture: The Key Concepts (Bloomsbury, 2008)
- Women, Science & Fiction: The Frankenstein Inheritance, (Palgrave, 2000)
Selected Journal Articles & Book Chapters
- 'The Way Home: Space Migration and Disorientation' in New Formations, 107/108. DOI: 10.3898/NewF:107-8.07. 2022
- ‘Leaving Home: Safer Spaces Beyond the Neoliberal Family’, in After Lockdown, Opening Up: Psychosocial Transformation in the Wake of COVID-19 (Palgrave, 2021)
- 'The Aesthetics of Retrieval: Beautiful Data, Glitch Art and Popular Culture’, in Anthropocenes – Human, Inhuman, Posthuman (DOI: 10.16997/ahip.15, 2020)
- ‘Home’, in Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism (2020)
- 'Urban Space and the Posthuman Imaginary', in Lindner, Christoph and Meissner, Miriam (eds.) The Routledge Companion to Urban Imaginaries. (Routledge, 2019)
- 'How can it not know what it is?' Blade Runner as an ambiguous dystopia', Science Fiction Film & Television. 9:1 (2016)
- 'Streets for Cyborgs: The Electronic Flâneur and the Posthuman City' Space and Culture, 18 (2015)
- 'Strange Zones: Science Fiction, Fantasy & The Posthuman City' in City: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action. 17:6 (2013).
- 'Monsters in the Metropolis: Pirate Utopias and the New Politics of Space' in Ted Guernelos & David J Gunkel (eds.) Transgression 2.0: Cultural Opposition in a Digital Age, (Continuum, 2011)
- Systems, Architecture & The Digital Body' in Parallax, 14:3. (2008)
- 'Sex and the Single Starship Captain: Compulsory Heterosexuality and Star Trek: Voyager' in Femspec, Vol VII, Issue 1 (2006). Awarded 'best of the second five years', 2010
- 'Bodies Out of This World: The Space Suit as Cultural Icon' in Science as Culture, Vol 13, No 1 (2004)
MODULES
- BA Photography: Final Major Project
- MA Fine Art: History and Theory
Publications
The last four years of publications can be viewed below.
Full publications list
Visit the research repository to view a full list of publications
- Introduction: The Nearly Silent Listener Women, Science and Fiction Revisited. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, pp.1–11
- Women, Science and Fiction Revisited Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
- The Way Home: Space Migration and Disorientation New Formations: A Journal of Culture, Theory, Politics. 2022 (107 & 108), p. 118‑138. https://doi.org/10.3898/NewF:107-8.07.2022
- Dazzled by the Sunshine Machines Science as Culture. 31 (3), pp. 412-417. https://doi.org/10.1080/09505431.2022.2112167
- Leaving Home: Safer Spaces Beyond the Neoliberal Family in: Ellis, D. and Voela, A. (ed.) After Lockdown, Opening Up: Psychosocial Transformation in the Wake of COVID-19. Palgrave Macmillan, pp.193-217
- Home in: Herbrechter, S., Callus, I., Rossini, M., Grech, M., de Bruin-Molé, M. and Müller, C. J. (ed.) Palgrave Handbook of Critical Posthumanism. Palgrave
- The Aesthetics of Retrieval: Beautiful Data, Glitch Art and Popular Culture Anthropocenes – Human, Inhuman, Posthuman. 1 (Art. 13). https://doi.org/10.16997/ahip.15
- Thought Without a Body, Science as Culture Science as Culture. 29 (2), pp. 293-307. https://doi.org/10.1080/09505431.2019.1674273