Vicki Kirby and Karen Barad

Vicki Kirby is Emeritus Professor of Social Sciences, The University of New South Wales and Visiting Professorial Fellow, Institute of Art and Architecture, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Her research explores the nature/culture division because so many political and ethical decisions are configured in terms of this opposition. 

Karen Barad is professor of Feminist Studies, Philosophy and History of Consciousness at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Barad's PhD is in theoretical particle physics and quantum field theory from SUNY Stony Brook. Barad held a tenured appointment in a physics department before moving into more interdisciplinary spaces.The 2022 IHR Distinguished Lecture Series: "When Humanities Meets Science" with Professors Vicki Kirby and Karen Barad in conversation on the constructed division between the humanities and sciences.

In the 2022 Distinguished Lecture: “When Humanities Meets Science,” Professors Vicki Kirby and Karen Barad were in conversation on the constructed division between the humanities and sciences.

Long at the forefront of theoretical movements that rethink the nexus of nature, culture and physics, the feminist anthropologist Vicki Kirby and feminist theorist Karen Barad have refused conceptual divisions between the humanities and sciences, and challenging long-held assumptions about the humanities. 

In “And what if Culture was really Nature all Along?”, professor Vicki Kirby explores the political and ethical consequences of our current nature and culture division.

Professor Karen Barad’s talk, “TransMaterialities: Errant Wanderings/Wonderings, Material Imaginings, Joyful Desirings: An Energetics of Electrifying Connectivity,” demonstrates the weirdness of nature and how our perceptions of nature are always constructed.