Cricket, music, memory, skill, place, collaboration, cognitive history; Leverhulme International Prof, Stirling Uni, Centre for the Sciences of Place and Memory
Six 4.5-year postdoc research fellowships in our new Centre for the Sciences of Place and Memory, University of Stirling, central Scotland! Please circulate this ad for outstanding researchers to work with me in an interdisciplinary team (closing 6 Oct).
I finish at Macquarie Uni April 9. Not retiring from my projects. Not planned. Fast cascading events since workplace change was announced 4 weeks ago. Wrung out. Regrouping. My sweat baked into uni brickwork since 1992. Time to skip the ivory towers; rip it up and start again.
I'm one of the lucky fellows for 2022-23 at
@IEAdeParis
. I'll be based there, at the hôtel de Lauzun on the île Saint-Louis, from September 1 through next June, on 'place & memory: cognitive ecologies of the city', with great collaborators from many fields
All clear today: 2 years cancer-free whew, since robotic neck surgery & six weeks' radiation green-masked. Swollen lymph still unpleasant, mouth always dry (right-side nodes & salivary glands blasted), not so great on teeth & spine, but taste is back yay for some of life's goods.
My amazing daughter has her first paper out, woohoo!!! lovely work
@celia_harris
,
@Penny_VB
, Sophia, & team! When working or remembering together, do we look at each other more because we're good at the task, or does sharing gaze more help us perform better? Or, both? congrats!!!
I'm thrilled to be starting as Leverhulme International Professor: more info on our new Centre coming soon. We also need a 60% Centre Manager: closing 23 September)
It's Hutto
@phlqddh
vs Sutton & O'Brien on memory traces! Just arrived, lovely copy, 'Current Controversies in Philosophy of Memory', eds
@mnemosim
@ar_santanna
& McCarroll. You judge who wins, 'radicals' or constructivists, distributed traces or none at all! Plus 5 more debates!
I'm delighted to be continuing on the editorial board of Philosophical Psychology
@JournalPHP
in a new engaged, inclusive, diverse mode, still a top outlet for quality interdisciplinary research in and between philosophy, psychology, & the cognitive sciences. Do submit your work!
Centre for the Sciences of Place and Memory
@stiruni
, first event! If in Scotland come in person, Weds 9 Oct 3pm talk by
@reavey_paula
on space, mental health, & memory, + reception: or contact me for zoom link. And, six 4.5-year postdoc jobs close Oct 6!
Hard copy in my hot little hand of the fine 2nd edition of The Routledge Handbook of Embodied Cognition, ten years on; 7 new chapters plus many updates incl for our 'Embodied Remembering'; great work eds Shannon Spaulding & Larry Shapiro
Hello
@durham_uni
! I'm settled for 10 weeks, with
@HarrisSmyth
, at beautiful
@HatfieldCollege
, thanks to its fabulous Master evolutionary anthropologist Ann MacLarnon, as visiting fellow alongside writer-in-residence
@mrmikeymr
. More on events & memory project
@DurhamIAS
to come
Worse than decimation: that was execution of only 1 person in 10. In my area, Cognitive Science & Psychology, 8-10 of our group of 36 Level D/E academics (Profs & Associate Profs) will be fired, slowly: similar brutal cuts in natural sciences & economics.
It's odd timing to have to correct a proof copy between Dec 23 and 30. But the urgency is apt: I'm finally publishing work on Aristotle on memory & mixture first done in 1993; and the task fitted well between a morning ocean dip and the MCG cricket test vs NZ. Happy holidays all!
cognitive humanities in Sicily! cfp, submit paper/ panel proposals by Jan 15 for conference June 3-5 in Catania! I've been to three of these terrific interdisciplinary meetings before, loved them, great work on show, please consider and circulate!
Thinking in the World! Thrilled to have a revised version of our paper on embodying thought, or applying intelligence to the reflexes, in this terrific reader
@Jill_TBA
@waynedc
alongside Mieke Bal, Serres, Lingis, Mialet, Carel, Malafouris, Ingold, Gemeinboeck, and more.
'Expertise: philosophical perspectives': lovely new OUP book arrived, great editing Mirko Farina,
@AndreaLavazza
,
@EpistemicAngst
. My piece on collaborative embodied skills weaves a few years' work with
@bicksnpieces
, Doris McIlwain & our skills mobs on sport, music, performance.
Help me, friends who study place, cities, spatial cognition, wayfinding, to navigate these intriguing research fields as I try to integrate with my take on memory and skill: here's an advance snapshot of my
@IEAdeParis
project
For years before she died, Doris McIlwain taught Philosophy of Psychoanalysis. Enjoy these podcasts! on why we are strangers to ourselves; on sciences of the particular; on psychoanalysis & the detritus of everyday life; on submission and non-compliance.
I'm doing a symposium on group know-how, with wonderful speakers
@birchlse
@BroTrasmundi
@MartensJudith
Michael Kimmel & Mikko Salmela, Wednesday at this week's Social Ontology conference online or live in Vienna
#soci22
Cumulative culture, archaeology, skill, evolution of cognition. Sterelny & Hiscock in *Current Anthropology*: expertise isn't copying; social scaffolding of skill is complex! Responses Valentine Roux,
@OliverWithAnI
, Steven Kuhn,
@DoctorSpurt
,
@CTennie
, me
After challenging periods, I've loved being one of a few ongoing editorial board members as a wonderful new team led by
@lisabortolotti
takes the fantastic interdisciplinary journal *Philosophical Psychology* into a rich, diverse new phase. Do send us your phil & psych research!
What did we do in the last year since we got a new editorial team? Read all about our (slow but steady) progress in this guest post on the Daily Nous:
#PeerReview
…
Workshop next week in Antwerp yay, on group know-how and joint expertise, shared intelligence in action;
@MartensJudith
has led the organization, me helping at a distance; small number of places to join online if you can participate in the whole gig, see
'Collaborative Embodied Performance: ecologies of skill', out in Feb, coedited w/ the amazing
@bicksnpieces
, thank you!! see Kath's thread for more info. Essays on dance, martial arts, freediving, architecture, front-of-house, failing at handstands, software musicians, much more!
Final final final final proofs are done, and
@SuttonProfessor
and I are beyond delighted to share that this edited collection – Collaborative Embodied Performance: Ecologies of Skill – will be available in February.
Comms cut-off since 7am to add to flooded physical isolation. No phone or internet, no sign of return, sorry! (Now on fragile, surreal link at Hat Head Bowlo). Choppers delivering supplies. No new lectures, no mgmt info on my redundancy We are fine, well stocked, love you all! Jx
@jonathannajens1
Theorist, gadfly, nuisance precision-seeker, bewildered apprentice in design, connector of literatures or catalyst between subfields, 'why can't we do *this* too?', overly impatient, reader and summariser ... part of the team, yet always different
Reminder: cfp ‘Intersubjectivity and Collective Memory’, Center for Subjectivity Research, University of Copenhagen, 24-25 April 2025: phenomenology, psych, social ontology, keynotes
@martacarava
(Purdue) & John Sutton: 500 words (pdf for blind review) by 15 Oct to dgyo
@hum
.ku.dk
Last ever meeting of Macquarie Uni's Faculty of Human Sciences before we are disestablished. I was in at FoHS's conception in 2007 and will celebrate it today with our fantastic colleagues who've produced great, collegial, surprising, wild work over a decade together.
Do partners remember and plan for the same things, in similar ways? Or do you and your partner use different strategies and technologies to remember stuff? When do you rely on each other, when on the environment? Great work
@celia_harris
shepherding our team over many years!
New paper on evidence for cognitive interdependence in older couples' memory compensation strategies. We found patterns of similarity & coordination as couples share everyday cognitive labour. Thanks
@SuttonProfessor
@pgkeil
@profajbarnier
& a great team
distributed cognition, resilience engineering, and cognitive practices - new paper by Alex Gillett, one of many young Macquarie Uni philosophers who has worked closely with
@MQCogSci
over years of interdisciplinary enquiry
'Case studies in cognitive ecology: microethnographies of skilled practices', bite-sized chunks showcasing our research group
@bicksnpieces
@GregDowney1
& more, Anthropology seminar, Macquarie Uni, zoom URL in comments, this Weds 10.30am Sydney = Weds 12.30am! UK = Tues 7.30pm NY
Me on the podcast circuit now, thanks to Paul Leworthy's Connecting Memories project. This is a long one: a lecture on distributed ecologies of remembering; a snapshot of our ethnographic take on collaborative memory science; Q&A. Comments welcome, enjoy!
4E memory! and, how many more Es can we add? It's the first of three days of online talks on embodied, extended, ecological, emotional memory and more, starting 1pm German time:
free excellent book out today! *The Edge of Sentience: risk & precaution in humans, other animals, & AI' by my fabulous friend & colleague Jonathan Birch
@birchlse
, extending & applying philosophy & cognitive theory to tough ethics, policy, science issues
Puzzled, glum at how long I take to finish work off, I looked at the timespan for my last 15 published, accepted & submitted papers: average just under 8 years from initiation of active research to seeing light of day, wow. Discounting the outlier that took 27 years, it's over 6!
@HumanitiesAU
@StirUni
@LeverhulmeTrust
Many thanks! This an unexpected thril, back in Scotland long-term after 33 years in Sydney. We are just getting started. Please circulate ad for six 4.5-year postdocs, closing date *this Sunday* Oct 6.
Great conference over, Generative Episodic Memory in Bochum, thanks Sen Cheng & team, here with
@peggystjacques
&
@MarkusWerning
, and for my late call up to do today's final keynote (whew). Fab students, postdocs, colleagues, women in science initiative, pluralistic & supportive!
@bicksnpieces
and I are thrilled for tomorrow's launch of our edited book *Collaborative Embodied Performance: ecologies of skill*, in Bloomsbury's 'Performance in Science' series: 3pm Sydney time (Fri March 18) at Performance Studies, Sydney Uni, or on zoom (link below)
Featuring my first joint paper with my old friend Gerard O'Brien (Adelaide), after 34 years of chat about pattern-transformation, cognitive fkexibility, traces, & connectionism: 'Distributed traces and the causal theory of constructive memory'. Rest of the book looks fascinating!
thanks all for support, kindness; hi to new followers!; anyone into psychoanalysis or philosophy, try this Doris McIlwain podcast, now season 2 on personality but back to drives, attachment, grief, art, resilience, the porous self (also Apple, Spotify etc)
End of four intensely stimulating days to remember at IPM4 in sticky Geneva, 50-odd talks on philosophy of memory, many by fab sharp junior researchers from all over geographically and intellectually, huge pleasure, time for a quiet cooling old town ale.
*Collaborative Embodied Performance: ecologies of skill*, coedited with
@bicksnpieces
, has 10 short (c.5000-word) chapters, 5 commentaries, and our editors' intro. See a preprint of the intro at .
@tonychemero
@tonychemero
this so-kind tweet was hugely affirming 6 weeks ago, & has added poignancy as suddenly I & my 35 fab senior colleagues in Psych & Cog Science face redundancy, 8-10 of us to be sacked without interview or external expert review by a committee of medical administrators
Two lovely new cognitive history books awaiting on campus today, doing place & memory for early modern geographies of embodiment, and memory & mixture for the Aristotle crew.
Next in the Bochum-Grenoble Memory Colloquium:
John Sutton
(Durham University)
Personal memory, the scaffolded mind, and cognitive change in the Neolithic
16:15-17:45 CET (UTC+01:00), 25 November 2021
@MarkusWerning
@ancopeeters
@SuttonProfessor
It's the wonderful Chris McCarroll giving a talk on felt connections and multifaceted selves in memory, speaking from quarantine in Taiwan, to kick off day 2 of a great online workshop run from the centre for philosophy of memory in Grenoble.
Three talks in the next week if interested: 1) 'Personal memory, the scaffolded mind, and cognitive change in the Neolithic', Thurs 25, 3.15pm (all UK times); 2) & 3) related talks on place and memory, inhabiting the past together, Mon 29, 1pm and Tues 30, 5.15pm. Details below.
It's 6.30am here at Hat Head on the mid-north coast of NSW, and I've a long day ahead of online teaching preparation - but for now, Mr Nietzsche and his philosophies can wait - morning all!
@MGStephenson
#timstwitterlisteningparty
yay for my wonderful PhD student
@Pini_Sarah
, jus announced as a finalist in the Australia Prize for distinguished achievement by a student in the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
@CHASS_Aus
for her short film Abisso
Real jobs, real growth? Cultural, emotional, technological, social & (yes) economic growth? Not from fossil fuels, private schools, corporate profit, but from our wonderful, precarious, neglected public universities. Stop the job losses. Give students back top in-person teaching.
A brilliant book, a melancholy tale of the origins of capitalism. Sterelny asks why we cooperate in our own oppression by devious, managerial, self-styled elites. Also, rich wild topics in cognitive archaeology, philosophy of biology, naturalised ethics, political psychology.
Ah sad news. Just Thursday, I said to a random pub query that Bruno Latour's the living French theorist I've most enjoyed since Michel Serres died. Mixture & impurity, history & science, ecology & experiment in messy practice We have never been modern, RIP
Coming up soon - 'Historical Cognitive Science: brain, minds, motions', a workshop in English & French at ENS de Lyon, March 10-11. Program and contact details
'Thinking Together: collective memory and collective knowledge' call for papers - cognitive science, indigenous studies, history, and philosophy! Come to Perth, Western Australia, or participate online as I will, Oct 31 to Nov 2, abstracts due Aug 16
Punchy practical advice from novelist Cormac McCarthy on writing lively, simple academic work - my students need this, yes, but gee I do even more (h/t Cathal O'Madagain):
Save dates, May 16-17: in-person Paris workshop 'memory, place, & material culture'
@IEAdeParis
. Speakers Madeleine Accarain, Roberto Casati, Andy Clark, Mark Edmonds, Sarah Gensburger, Valeria Giardino, Paula Reavey, Erik Rietveld, Evelyn Tribble, Michael Wheeler. Details soon.
Great day 1 symposium at Industrial Crafts Research Network, evoking the visceral knowhow of skilled operators, greasy uncertain machines of past precision techniques, here Simon Penny's rich take, distributed cognitive histories of embodied expertise
#ICRN2021
#ExhibitingSkill
@sallymcmanus
hey
@sallymcmanus
yes those were great days, what a cohort and what discussions we had
@Macquarie_Uni
Philosophy ... all strength to you on all fronts, all that you're working for matters so much ... thanks heaps for your support
Since wonder-surgeon Jonathan Clark worked his robot on my neck, he's been awarded Order of Australia and had h-index skyrocket to 53. I learned more today about how they shifted bits of muscle round my body, a proper augmented human after the robot's intervention. I am so lucky.
Theorists of skill& memory in philosophy & psychology, this is the direct link for free downloads of 'Memory Systems and the Control of Skilled Action', with
@waynedc
and
@bicksnpieces
- enjoy!
I'm happy to have a piece in this collection of essays, mine addresses the ambitious account of dreams and memory in Maurice Halbwachs' 1925 book The Social Frameworks of Memory. Thanks to the editors, keen to see it all!
After Wednesday's talk on cognitive ecologies and disruptive technologies, today in Lisbon I'm off to the ArgLab at Nova Institute of Philosophy to present work with
@bicksnpieces
&
@celia_harris
on embodied interaction in collaborative recall experiments
Here's to my great friend, supervisor, mentor, colleague, model in living and in thinking, Stephen Gaukroger, who died peacefully last night in Sydney. All love to Helen, Cressida
@CGaukroger
, Hugh & all. A wee thread: Stephen's thrilling course on mechanism in the 17th century..
@maxcoltheart
@MarinaTrakas
Much will survive, including our fab new undergrad Cog Sci degree, and most jobs. But shunted in to a (terrific but) generic large school of psychological sciences, something unique is lost, the grand interdisciplinary dream, with philosophy, psychiatry, cog neuro, lings, AI, etc
Congrats Lisa! this is fantastic news for Philosophical Psychology, a fantastic journal heading into a new phase - yes great effort
@MitchHerschbach
too - onwards with the inclusive and insistently interdisciplinary agenda!
Exciting news: from Jan 2022, I will be the editor of Philosophical Psychology! Ready to build an editorial team of experts across the globe to make the journal what you want to read & where you want to publish if your research is at the intersection of philosophy & psychology /1
Challenges and opportunities of data analysis in sport - terrific piece by
@ajarrodkimber
with
@Numb3z
- biomechanics, spatial tracking, bat sensors and more ...
carnage in the universities, how do we together fight the end of quality teaching and research? ... this piece was published 3 Feb, two months ago - anyone got an update on figures now?
Deepest cuts in 60 years across Australia's Universities
Cuts of up to 15% of senior academic staff; many forced to compete for a small number of junior positions
**Tens of thousands of jobs in country's the 3rd largest export sector**
Wulf Kansteiner talks about
@memorystudies
, the Sage journal I worked on for 12 years, and its high new impact factor, at session on getting published in memory studies
#MSA2019
@MemStudiesAssoc
@maxcoltheart
As Australia's only Dept of Cog Science, we look anomalous to bureaucrats. Official uni aims are 'simplify, streamline, standardise': what's unique, organic, local, effective is trampled in a rush to the lowest common denominator. So sorry
@maxcoltheart
, we have all tried so hard
how do technologies relate to memory in different contexts? when do they disrupt or degrade memory, when do they complement or transform it? how do we study such dynamic relations in realistic settings? Grenoble's Centre for Philosophy of Memory host a gig on all this, May 2023:
Starting today in Lyon and on zoom: 'Historical Cognitive Science: brains, minds, motions', from 3pm today & all day tomorrow. Program at , zoom link in comment below
Ecological sport psychology allows us to explore rich middle ground between pure intuition and intellectualism as accounts of embodied expertise: Miguel Segundo-Ortin at Wollongong skill workshop.
'Corner-Fighter collaboration in Muay Thai - a cognitive ethnography of the extended fighter', online talk by Sara Kim Hjortborg, coming up in under 3 hours, Anthropology seminar series at Macquarie Uni, zoom address in comments, 10.30am Sydney = half past midnight UK = 7.30pm NY
Third-wave extended cognition moves along in this target article by
@MadsDengsoe
&
@MdKirchhoff
; my commentary is 'Individuals for Anti-Individualists'
New target article out in Constructivist Foundations with
@MdKirchhoff
, and with commentaries by some of my favorite researchers in the field.
We discuss 4E cognition and the possible role of meta-organismic sympoiesis in cognitive systems.
I indulged in three amazing online talks on Wednesday: Serafina Cuomo on distributed cognition in ancient numeracy, Victoria Wohl on the pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles, and a powerful virtual tour of Franco's Valley of the Fallen by Marije Hristova & Paco Ferrandiz.
Day 1
@ASPP2022
ends with a great symposium on scaffolding across the lifespan to enjoy on the big screen -
@celia_harris
improving aged care,
@Penny_VB
on kids and their peers talking memory, Samuel Jones on car music listening practices, plus
@RHeersmink
@Richard_Menary
yay!
Cognitive humanities, film cognition, misreading, Eisenstein, distributed creativity and more at a great worksop on naturalising aesthetics, with Karin Kukkonen, Murray Smith, Julia Vassilieva, Karen Pearlman, Richard Menary et al
Great online talk coming up, 2pm Weds 15 Sept (Sydney time): neuroanthropologist
@GregDowney1
on human echolocation & sensory plasticity, based on his collaborative work with extraordinarily skilful vision impaired experts - highly recommended!
The next
@CEPET_MQ
virtual colloquium will be held on Sept 15. Prof Greg Downey (
@GregDowney1
) from
@Macquarie_Uni
will speak about his work on 'Human echolocation and sensory development: Concepts for neuroanthropology'. All welcome!
More details here:
Curious about mind-body interactions? Memory? AI? VR? How we read, think and make decisions?
@Macquarie_Uni
is offering a Bachelor of Cognitive and Brain Sciences beginning in 2020.
More here:
Please share if you think others may be interested too.
2-year postdoc fellowship in Sydney, for anthropologist/ cognitive scientist, with
@GregDowney1
plus input from me: your ethnographic work in skill acquisition, performance, sport, practice