Automation & Automatism/s

Automation & Automatism/s

 28 January 2023

conference programme

9:30 – 10:00    registration and welcome

10:00 – 12:00   panel 1: Human Machines and Non-Human Actors                (in person)

chair: Molly Crozier (University of Liverpool)

·       Emanuele Stefanori (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

When the Clock took the Floor: Technological and Mechanical Objects as Non-Human Characters in Augusto De Angelis’ Detective Novel Il Banchiere

·       Anita Barmettler (University of Limerick)

The Perfect Female Automaton in Literature and Film Across Culture and Time

·       Howard Ryland (University of Oxford)

Title tbc

·       Thomas Crew (University of Cambridge)

‘The World is a Machine, Man an Automaton’: Technological Progress and Human Rationalisation in Friedrich Georg Jünger’s Perfection of Technology

12:00 – 12:15   break

12:15 – 1:30    keynote: Ben Roberts (University of Sussex)                          (in person)

Title tbc

chair: Kate Foster (King’s College London)

1:30 – 2:30      lunch

2:30 – 4:00      panel 2: Control and the Automatic                                 (online)

                        chair: tbc

·       Barbara Cohen Bastos (King’s College London)

Surrealist Automatism: Investigations Towards a New Form of Consciousness

·       Elizabeth Beckman (University of Michigan at Ann Abor)

Examining Moral Responsibility for Empathic Failures: The Role of Automatic Processing

·       Sylvie Durmelat (Georgetown University)

The Scalability of Kouskous with a K

4:00 – 4:30      break

4:30 – 6:00      panel 3: Animals, Robots, Interactions                              (in person)

                  chair: Alexandra Pugh (King’s College London)

·       Naomi Madeleine Harland-Smith (Durham University)

Searching for Stiegler’s ‘new state of law in the face of automisation’: What is Wrong with Animal Rights?

·       Jess Majekodunmi (independent researcher)

Robots that Suck

·       Eleonora Lima (King’s College London & Trinity College Dublin)

Ai-Da and Dante: AI Automation of Poetry

6:00 - 7:30 drinks reception (details tbc)