Biography

I am a Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of Kent’s School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research. See the rest of the Cultural Studies team.

I worked for a long time on conspiracy theories and other popular knowledges, but have now moved towards the politics of secrets and secrecy. This has developed into an interest in “transparency” as a cultural metaphor. 

I am the author of Knowledge Goes Pop: From Conspiracy Theory to Gossip (Berg, 2006), co-editor (with Gary Hall) of New Cultural Studies: Adventures in Theory (EUP, 2006), and editor of a special issue of Cultural Studies (21 (1) 2007) and Theory, Culture & Society (28 (7-8) 2011). I’m also the reviews editor for Culture Machine and involved with various online projects including Liquid Theory TV, Liquid Books, and the Open Humanities Press.

Watch Liquid Theory TV

Career
After teaching at Sussex and Middlesex, I joined the University of Kent in 2008.

Education
After a degree in English Literature at Exeter University, I studied for my MA in Critical Theory and DPhil in Culture and Communication at Sussex University.
 
Find me:
On Academia

Teaching

Current
I am convenor of the Part 1 modules Modern Culture and Contemporary Culture. I also convene and teach the stage 2/3 module Cultures of Secrecy and the Level 3 Cultural Studies Dissertation module. I offer sessions and lectures on the core cultural studies module, Popular Culture, Media and Society, the sociology Methodologies module, and MA in Sociology.

Past
Over the years, I have taught a variety of courses in Media Studies, Cultural Studies, and English including Conspiracy Cultures, Media Practices, Cultural Autobiography, Representing the Body, Postmodern Popular Culture, The Politics of Representation, Media and Power, and Creative Writing.

Supervision
I would welcome applications and proposals for MPhil and PhD research supervision in any area related to my teaching or research interests. If you are interested in studying at the University of Kent, please email me to discuss further.

Research

Research interests
I worked for a long time on conspiracy theories and other popular knowledges and wrote a monograph on this topic with the help of a year-long AHRB research grant. This concern ran alongside work on the use of theory in cultural studies. In recent years, the focus of my research has settled on secrets and transparency in public and political life and I am busy publishing journal articles in this area. Listen to a podcast on this topic here.

Current
Alongside traditional academic publishing, I am involved in a number of projects in the digital humanities.

Liquid Theory TV

In collaboration with Gary Hall and Peter Woodbridge, I am developing a series of IPTV programmes. IPTV, in its broadest sense, stands for all those technologies which use computer networks to deliver audio-visual programming.

The idea behind the Liquid Theory TV project is to experiment with IPTV’s potential for providing new ways of communicating intellectual ideas, easily and cheaply, both inside and outside of the university.

The second episode in the series takes as its focus Gilles Deleuze's short essay ‘Postscript on the Societies of Control’.

Watch Living Books About Life

In a joint project with Goldsmiths and Coventry, I am one of three series editors of Living Books About Life. Funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), and published by Open Humanities Press (OHP), Living Books About Life is a series of curated, open access books about life - with life understood both philosophically and biologically - which provide a bridge between the humanities and the sciences. Produced by a globally-distributed network of writers and editors, the books in the series repackage existing open access science research by clustering it around selected topics whose unifying theme is life: e.g., air, agriculture, bioethics, cosmetic surgery, electronic waste, energy, neurology and pharmacology.

Liquid Books
I co-edit a series of books for the Open Humanities Press under the title Liquid Books. We draw on open access articles and multi-media content to push the boundaries of conventional publishing.

Publications

Monograph

• Knowledge Goes Pop: From Conspiracy Theory to Gossip (London: Berg, 2006).

Edited journal edition

• ‘Secrecy and Transparency’, Theory, Culture and Society, Volume 28 (7-8) December 2011.
• ‘The Secret Issue’, Cultural Studies, Volume 21, No.1 January 2007.

Edited books

• The In/Visible, ed. Clare Birchall (Open Humanities Press: 2011).
• New Cultural Studies: The Liquid Theory Reader, eds. Clare Birchall and Gary Hall (Open Humanities Press: 2009).
• New Cultural Studies: Adventures in Theory, eds. Clare Birchall and Gary Hall (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006). (A US edition of this book was published by the University of Georgia Press in March 2007; a South Asian edition (for sale in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Pakistan, Bhutan and Bangladesh) by Orient Longman in October 2007. A Turkish translation has appeared from Ayrac, and Nanjing University Press has brought out a Chinese translation.)

Essays in peer-reviewed journals

• ‘Transparency, Interrupted: Secrets of the Left’, Theory, Culture and Society, Volume 28 (7-8) December 2011.
• Introduction to ‘Secrecy and Transparency’: The Politics of Opacity and Openness’, Theory, Culture and Society, Volume 28 (7-8) December 2011.
• ‘“There’s been too much secrecy in this city”: The False Choice between Secrecy and Transparency in U.S. Politics’, Cultural Politics 7 (1) 2011: 133-156.
• With Gary Hall and Pete Woodbridge, ‘Deleuze’s “Postscript on the Societies of Control”’ Culture Machine 11, 2010.
• ‘Cultural Studies Confidential,’ in ‘The Secret Issue,’ ed. Clare Birchall, Cultural Studies, Volume 21, No.1 January 2007, pp.5-21.
• ‘Just Because You’re Paranoid, Doesn’t Mean They’re Not Out To Get You’, Culture Machine 6, 2004.
  ‘Competing Claims on Knowledge’, Mediactive, ‘Knowledge/Culture,’ No.1, May 2003, pp.8-24.
• ‘Conspiracy Theories and Academic Discourses: The Necessary Possibility of (Over)Interpretation’, Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, Vol. 15, No. 1, 2001, pp.67-76.
• ‘alt.conspiracy.princess-diana: The Conspiracy of Discourse’, New Formations 36, 1999, pp.125-140.

Chapters in edited collections:

• With Gary Hall, ‘Cultural Studies and Theory: Once More from the Top with Feeling,’ in Renewing Cultural Studies, ed. Paul Smith (Temple University Press, Philadelphia: 2011).
• With Gary Hall, ‘New Cultural Studies: Adventures in Theory (Some Comments, Clarifications, Explanations, Observations, Recommendations, Remarks, Statements and Suggestions),’ in New Cultural Studies: Adventures in Theory, eds. Clare Birchall and Gary Hall (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), pp.1-28.
• ‘Cultural Studies and the Secret,’ in New Cultural Studies: Adventures in Theory, eds. Clare Birchall and Gary Hall (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), pp.293-310.
• ‘Feels Like Home: Nostalgia and the Adult Viewer’, Teen TV in  the 1990s: Genre, Consumption and Identity, eds. Kay Dickinson and Glyn Davies (London: BFI, 2004), pp.176-189.
• ‘Economic Interpretation’, Illuminating Eco: on the Boundaries of Interpretation, Warwick Studies in the Humanities Series, eds. Rochelle Sibley and Charlotte Ross (Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2004), pp.71-87.
• ‘The Commodification of Conspiracy Theory’, Conspiracy Nation: The Politics of Paranoia in Postwar America, ed. Peter Knight (New York: New York University Press, 2002), pp.233-253.

Book reviews

• ‘The Serious Play of Conspiracy’, review of Peter Knight, Conspiracy Cultures, New Formations 46, 2002, pp. 168-171.

Journalism

• ‘Buzz Aldrin (Possibly) Salutes the American Flag,’ Photoworks, October, 2011.
• Every week, I wrote television and radio reviews for the Saturday Guardian Guide. April 2002 - 2008.
• ‘Beyond the frame,’ G2, The Guardian, 30 April, 2008.
• ‘Pushing the envelope,’ Guardian Unlimited: Arts Blog, 11 April 2008.
• ‘Just don’t call them chick flicks,’ Film & Music, The Guardian, 31st August 2007.
•  ‘Up for It?’ The Guardian, Education, 24 July 2001, p. 6.

Activity

Editorial

• Reviews Editor of Culture Machine, an international, online, peer-reviewed journal of cultural studies and cultural theory. Culture Machine's international editorial board includes Lawrence Grossberg, Peggy Kamuf, Alphonso Lingis, Meaghan Morris, Paul Patton and Avital Ronell.
  
  The journal provides an ideal opportunity to explore the possibilities and problems posed for research into cultural, sociological, aesthetic and political questions by new media technologies. Culture Machine was launched in February 1999.
  
  Distinguished contributors to Culture Machine include Alain Badiou, Simon Critchley, Jacques Derrida, Diane Elam, Henry A. Giroux, Lawrence Grossberg, N. Katherine Hayles, Peggy Kamuf, Ernesto Laclau, J. Hillis Miller, Mark Poster, Bernard Stiegler and Gregory L. Ulmer.

• Co-editor of a series in the OHP monograph series, run in collaboration with the University of Michigan’s Scholarly Publishing Office, and the Public Knowledge Project headed by John Willinsky of Stanford University.

• Editorial Board, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies (published by the National Communication Association and Routledge/Taylor & Francis).

• Editorial Board, Ctrl-Z New Media Philosophy.

Memberships

• Member of the American Comparative Literature Association.
• Member of the Association for Cultural Studies.
• Member of MECCSA.

Links

Websites of interest in this field

• Liquid Books
• Culture Machine
• Living Books About Life
• Secrecy and transparency links

YouTube