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Research Profile
My research focuses on how technological developments impact and transform our experience and understanding of central political concepts like sovereignty, solidarity, citizenship, community. The question that drives this research is: how is technological innovation transforming the contemporary vocabulary of political thought? The scope of this investigation is global, but there is a specific focus on the European Union, in both its internal and external politics, as a scene for techno-political co-production and change. My approach is grounded in a phenomenological method that explores, in the first instance, how meaning is formed in the multi-faceted relations between individuals, groups, institutions and technologies.
The current testing grounds for my ideas is the BISS Institute at Maastricht University where I am a primary investigator in the area of social and political impact of data-driven technologies and Artificial Intelligence (machine learning, machine reasoning, robotics, algorithmic decision making). RRI is a programme for mediating techno-political change and has been adopted in various forms across Europe. It is, however, beset with challenges and obstacles, both practical and theoretical. For example, how can an innovation governance programme address fundamental questions of value and what is the link between the notion of responsibility in RRI and democratic legitimation? Is the demos always responsible? These challenges are often rooted in presupposed notions about fundamental political concepts that underpin RRI. My research into how techno-political change is played out at the nexus between these concrete contexts of innovation in biotechnology and robotics, and the fundamental concept of political theory that structure our political institutions and societies. |
Recent Publications
Braun, M and Meacham, D. (2019) ‘The trust game: CRISPR for human germline editing unsettles scientists and society’ EMBO Reports (DOI 10.15252/embr.201847583)
Meacham, D. and Kent, J. (2019). ‘‘Synthetic Blood’: Entangling Politics and Biology’ Body and Society (https://doi.org/10.1177/1357034X18822076) Meacham, D. & Prado Casanova, M. (2018). 'The Over-Extended Mind? Pink Noise and the Ethics of Interaction-Dominant Systems.' Nanoethics https://doi.org/10.1007/s11569-018-0325-x Meacham, D. E. and Studley, M. (2017) ‘Could a robot care? It’s all in the movement.’ In: P. Lin et al. (eds.). Robot Ethics 2.0. Oxford: Oxford University Press (2017) ‘Critiquing Technologies of the Mind: Enhancement, Alteration and Anthropotechnology,’ Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 16(1): 1-16 (2017) ‘How Low Can You Go?’ Humana.mente 31: 73-95 (special issue: The Enactive Approach to Qualitative Ontology: In Search of New Categories) (2017). Metternich, The Gut-Brain Axis, and the Turing Cops:: The Subjects of Posthuman IR. In C. Eroukhmanoff & M. Harker (Eds.), Reflections on the Posthuman in International Relations : The Anthropocene, Security and Ecology (pp. 119-129). (E-IR Edited Collections). Bristol, UK: E-International Relations Publishing (2016) ‘European Institutions?,’ Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 47(3): 226-241 (2016) ‘Supercivilisation and Biologism’ In: Thinking After Europe: Jan Patočka and Politics. Meacham, D. and Tava, F. (eds.). London: Rowman and Littlefield International. (2016) ‘Thinking After Europe, Jan Patočka and Politics’ (editor’s introduction). In: Thinking After Europe: Jan Patočka and Politics. Meacham, D. and Tava, F. (eds.). London: Rowman and Littlefield International (2016) ‘Editor’s Introduction’ In: The Relation between the Physical and the Moral in Man: The Philosophy of Maine de Biran, D. Meacham and J. Spadola eds. and trans. London: Bloomsbury (2015) ‘The Subject of Enhancement: Augmented Capacities, Extended Cognition, and Delicate Ecologies of the Mind.’ The New Bioethics: A Multidisciplinary Journal of Biotechnology and the Body. 21(1): 5-19 Meacham, D. E. and Studley, M. (2015) Il y a du soin dans l’air: Robots soignants et environnements de soin. Multitudes, 58: 173-183 (2015) ‘Editor’s Introduction’ In: Medicine and Society, New Continental Perspectives, D. Meacham ed., Philosophy & Medicine (series). Dordrecht: Springer (2014) ‘Sense and Life: Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy of Nature and Evolutionary Biology’ Discipline Filosofiche 24(2) (2014) ‘Empathy and Alteration: The Ethical Relevance of a Phenomenological Species Concept’, Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 2014 39 (5): 543-564 doi: 10.1093/jmp/jhu030. |
Projects / Collaborations
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