Rearticulating the promise of non-representational theories: affect, labour and passivity in negative times
2 May - 13 June 2025
Biography
Professor David Bissell is Professor of Human Geography in the School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. His research draws on cultural geography and mobilities research to investigate contemporary social problems involving mobility-labour relationships.
Empirically, David’s research projects are concerned with how industrial transformations are reshaping individuals, households and communities. Over the past fifteen years, he has undertaken research projects that have explored the socio-spatial impacts of commuting on cities; how mobile working practices are reshaping the home; robotics, automation and the future of work; the rise of digital on-demand ‘gig’ work; and how new forms of digital remote work are transforming cities.
Conceptually, David’s research explores different situations of bodily expropriation and incapacity. Developing ideas in non-representational theory and negative geographies, his work seeks to question foundational social science presumptions about embodiment that people are necessarily present, capacious and engaged in what they do. To this end, he is currently working on a book project called ‘Out Of It’ that is exploring the spatial politics of passive affects through situations of brain fog, headache, jet lag, anxiety and sunstroke.
David is author of Transit Life: How Commuting Is Transforming Our Cities (MIT Press, 2018), and co-editor of Negative Geographies: Exploring the Politics of Limits (U Nebraska Press, 2021), the Routledge Handbook of Mobilities (2014), and Stillness in a Mobile World (Routledge, 2011). He is Managing Editor of Social & Cultural Geography and Steering Committee Chair for AusMob, the Australian Mobilities Research Network.
David graduated from the University of Cambridge in 2003 with a BA in Geography. He undertook postgraduate studies at Durham University, graduating with a PhD in Human Geography in 2008.
Research Summary
Professor David Bissell will be hosted by Dr Vickie Zhang, School of Geographical Sciences. This visit will allow Professor Bissell and Dr Zhang to further develop collaborative research exploring methodological and conceptual stakes in the fields of social and cultural geography. The researchers will progress two interrelated projects which aim to rearticulate the promise of non-representational theories in light of the pervasive sense of negativity gripping the present.
The first project brings together their respective research exploring contemporary challenges to working life, including discussions on the future of work, digital automation, industrial transitions and economic slowdown to theoretically, conceptually and empirically advance non-representational theories. This research folds the experiences of negativity, passivity and affective exposure that pervade the social, political and economic fabric of the present into the conceptual framework of non-representational approaches, rearticulating their ‘positive’ tenor. The visit will deepen this line of thinking through a one-day workshop exploring the intersection of non-representational theories and negativity.
The second project will unfold a non-representational ethos to interviewing methods. Addressing a foundational tool in social science research, this project addresses the enduring suggestion that affective, embodied and non-representational methodologies are incompatible with talk-based interviewing methods. Through a graduate workshop, the visit will explore the capacities and limits of interviewing methods to express and process the nuances of interrupted, ruptured and turbulent presents.
In addition to these engagements, Prof Bissell will present the joint School of Geographical Sciences 11th Annual Bassett Lecture and Bristol ‘Next Generation’ Visiting Professorship Public Lecture. In this lecture, Prof Bissell will present his book project, ‘Out Of It’, addressing pressing issues of how the compromised present is expropriating and incapacitating social and bodily life.
Professor Bissell's lectures and seminars are listed on our Events page.
You can contact Professor Bissell's host Dr Vickie Zhang for further information.
