I am interested in developing a better understanding of modern, embodied existence and in working to this end at the intersection of history, philosophy and sociology. My preferred archives are contemporary medical and agricultural practices, and Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben and Gilles Deleuze, thinkers who sit uneasily at the same disciplinary intersection, are my principal interlocutors.

I am interested in supervising students wishing to study either the history of the medical and human sciences or the history of the environmental sciences, agriculture and the environment. I am interested especially in those students wishing to combine such historical studies and critical examination of the analytical frameworks developed by Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben and Gilles Deleuze.

My current undergraduate teaching focuses on both the role of the life sciences and medicine in modern bio-political governmental mechanisms and the nature of historical explanation (HIST260; HIST274; HIST275). I also convene a Special Study Module on Medicine, Life and Death.

Currently my research focuses primarily on the notion that the contemporary development of the biomedical sciences mark a profound historical rupture. I am attempting to interrogate this notion by extending my previous work on the history of genetics to encompass the contemporary biomedical reconfiguration of ageing and the passage of time (partly in collaboration with Tiago Moreira). I am also exploring the manifold philosophical implications of this notion by participating in the Reading Group (the current core members of the group are Arthur Bradley, Michael Dillon, Bulent Diken and Charlie Gere). At the same time, I find myself drawn back repeatedly to revisit my earliest work on the relationship between the lives of humans and the lives of insects.

Works in Progress

• With T. Moreira, 'La biogérontologie comme critique de la biomédecine', in L. Lambrichs and B. Fantini (eds.), Histoire de la Pensée Médicale Contemporaine (Paris: Seuil, forthcoming).
• 'Blessed life ... : Agamben between Foucault and Deleuze', for T. Frost (ed.), Agamben and the Coming Community: Legal, Political and Philosophical Perspectives (London: Routledge, forthcoming).
• 'Nature, culture and the life to come: Taubes, Bergson and Deleuze', for M. Dillon (ed.), Culture, Politics, Eschatology (London: Palgrave Macmillan, in preparation).
• Molecules, Populations and the Mortal Organism: Historical and Philosophical Reflections on the Biology of Ageing and Death.

Professional Roles

Member of the editorial board at Rethinking History and member of the editorial advisory board at the Journal of Historical Sociology.