Critical and cultural theory; the philosophy of history; modernisms/modernities; affect, emotion and society; narrative, autoethnography, and feeling history; history of photography

My research looks at the relationship between desire and history, asking the principle question of how structures of feeling are embedded - and enmeshed - with the manner in which we compose histories.  The work is inherently interdisciplinary, drawing from recent work in human geographies, critical cultural theory, and queer literary and visual studies, and is currently focused on rhythms, particularly those that refashion the accelerationist notion of history in terms of slowness and drag.   

Everything.  But everything is already nothing.  History is in this rhizome. It was to be squidgy. Then the whole world would slop to the ground like a soufflé as it loses its heat, and, in that moment, I would be swallowed within the walls of the building so as to hear the echoes which saturate the concrete drawn upon a sirens whisper from a sad face.  They always smiled at me.

I currently teach on five modules:

HIST103: Modernisms/Modernities

HIST265: Elvis, Tupperware and TV: American Popular Culture, 1945-1968

HIST351: How the Camera Changed the World: The Photographic Image in History

HIST420: How Historians Understand and Explain

HIST477: Creative Voices

• Alex Wilkinson (forthcoming), ‘Slow Modernity: How the Ghosts Stole All the Kisses’ Critical Studies – Cultural Methodologies.  

• Alex Wilkinson & Carlo Comanducci (ed., forthcoming), ‘Introduction’, The Storytelling Project: Reflecting on Story’s Place in our Lives, Inter-Discplinary.net press, e-book.

• Alex Wilkinson (forthcoming) ‘Queer Storytellers: Desire and Narrative’ in Story8: Probing the Boundaries, Inter-Disciplinary.net press, e-book.

• Alex Wilkinson (forthcoming) ‘Encounters with – and accounting for – the loss: the wear of the past’, Qualitative Inquiry, early online view.

• Alex Wilkinson (2014) ‘To be a some thing: the desire-to-history’ Critical Studies – Cultural Methodologies, early online view.

• Alex Wilkinson (2014) ‘All things thrown and wonderful: all memories great and small’, Journal of Historical Sociology, 27.4, 579-599.

PhD, Lancaster University (2013): Mad Love to the Ordinary: History, Desire, and Modernity

MA, Lancaster University (2009): Avant-Garde Photography in Europe, c. 1918-1945

BA Hons, Lancaster University (2008)

I try to paint and excuse my lack of skill by abstraction, and breaking the frames.  I play bridge for Scotland.  I spend most of my time reading literature, from Raymond Chandler to odd Surrealists.  I like art galleries and grave yards.  And wine, too.  I try to photograph when I can, and look for odd bits of trash and floating language.  And beer.