Professor Tim Dant
Emeritus ProfessorResearch Interests
Since retiring from my Professorship at Lancaster University in December 2014 I have been pleased to remain a ¡®continuing member’ of the University. I remain on the supervisory teams of two current PhD students, one working on ¡®climate change rhetoric and catastrophe’ and another on the impact of ¡®legal highs’ in rapidly modernising Romania. I have also recently joined the supervisory team for a Phd student who is researching ¡®cycling sociabilities’.
Following my period as Head of Department of Sociology (2010-2013) I enjoyed a sabbatical that gave me a taste for reading again. I began a project on formulating a critical phenomenology from the work of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and Schutz¡ but so far have only managed to produce essays. One was published online last year taking a phenomenological approach to Theory of Mind and autism (it grew out of my involvement in the Catalyst project at Lancaster), another in the publication pipeline is on ¡®guns and morality, taking issue with the Latourian view of materiality. A third draws on the role of bicycle repair videos in a changing material culture to argue for what Hans Jonas calls an ¡®imperative of responsibility’ towards the stuff we use. I have a further two in draft form taking issue with the theory of ¡®extended mind’ and the morality of technology that I am working on with a Dutch Emeritus Professor of Tissue Engineering. There are a series of themes in all these bits of writing; things and material culture, cultural mediation, moral responsibility for stuff and technology, theories of mind, perception and human action. Eventually I hope to form these ideas into a critical phenomenology useful in the dying days of late modernity.
Recent publications:
Dant, T (2015) ¡®In two minds: Theory of Mind, intersubjectivity and autism’, Theory and Psychology, Vol. 25(1), 45-62.
Dant, T. (2014) ¡®The Driver and the Passenger’ in P. Adey; D. Bissell; K. Hannam; P. Merriman, M. Sheller (eds) Mobilities Handbook, London: Routledge
Dant, T. (2014) ¡®True Automobility’ in E. Casella, G. Evans, P. Harvey, H. Knox, C. Mclean, E. Silva, N. Thoburn and K. Woodward (eds) Objects and Materials: A Routledge Companion London: Routledge ¨C paper accepted, in press.
Laurier, E. and Dant T. (2012) ¡®What else we do while driving: towards the driverless car’ in M. Grieco and J. Urry (eds) Mobilities: New Perspectives on Transport and Society, Farnham: Ashgate.
Dant, T. (2012) ¡®Seeing Things: Apprehending Material Culture’ in I. Heywood and B. Sandywell (eds.) Handbook of Visual Culture, Oxford: Berg.
Dant, T. (2012) Television and the Moral Imaginary: Society and the Small Screen,Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Selected Publications
Dant, T. 2012 Basingstoke : Palgrave Macmillan. 215 p. ISBN: 9780230234819.
Book
Dant, T. 31/08/2009 In: Sociological Research Online. 15, (3), p. n/a. 25 p.
Journal article
Dant, T. 03/2008 In: Journal of Consumer Culture. 8, 1, p. 11-33. 23 p.
Journal article
All Publications
01/11/2012 → 31/07/2013
Research
01/11/2011 → 30/04/2015
Research
- CeMoRe - Centre for Mobilities Research
- Mobilities.Lab