Professor Paolo Palladino

PhD Supervision Interests

I am interested in supervising students wishing to study either the history of the medical and human sciences or the history of the environmental sciences, agriculture and the environment. I am interested especially in those students wishing to combine such historical studies and critical examination of the analytical frameworks developed by Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben and Gilles Deleuze.

Current Teaching

My current undergraduate teaching focuses on both the role of the life sciences and medicine in modern bio-political governmental mechanisms and the nature of historical explanation (HIST260; HIST274; HIST275). I also convene a Special Study Module on Medicine, Life and Death.

Research Interests

Currently my research focuses primarily on the notion that the contemporary development of the biomedical sciences mark a profound historical rupture. I am attempting to interrogate this notion by extending my previous work on the history of genetics to encompass the contemporary biomedical reconfiguration of ageing and the passage of time (partly in collaboration with Tiago Moreira). I am also exploring the manifold philosophical implications of this notion by participating in the Reading Group (the current core members of the group are Arthur Bradley, Michael Dillon, Bulent Diken and Charlie Gere). At the same time, I find myself drawn back repeatedly to revisit my earliest work on the relationship between the lives of humans and the lives of insects.

Additional Information

Works in Progress

• With T. Moreira, 'La biogérontologie comme critique de la biomédecine', in L. Lambrichs and B. Fantini (eds.), Histoire de la Pensée Médicale Contemporaine (Paris: Seuil, forthcoming).
• 'Blessed life ... : Agamben between Foucault and Deleuze', for T. Frost (ed.), Agamben and the Coming Community: Legal, Political and Philosophical Perspectives (London: Routledge, forthcoming).
• 'Nature, culture and the life to come: Taubes, Bergson and Deleuze', for M. Dillon (ed.), Culture, Politics, Eschatology (London: Palgrave Macmillan, in preparation).
• Molecules, Populations and the Mortal Organism: Historical and Philosophical Reflections on the Biology of Ageing and Death.

Professional Roles

Member of the editorial board at Rethinking History and member of the editorial advisory board at the Journal of Historical Sociology.

• Culture, Politics, Eschatology: A Symposium

  21/09/2012 → 22/09/2012
  Paolo Palladino, Arthur Bradley, Bulent Diken, Charles Gere
  The symposium's theme is the continuing cultural and political relevance of eschatology. In recent years, diverse contemporary commentators have attended to eschatology. The symposium takes its cue fr ... Read more»

• Ageing and Biomedicine

  01/10/2006 →
  Paolo Palladino
  The proliferation of popular books, as well as innumerable public consultations and official reviews of government policy, suggests that the future development of the sciences of ageing is presently a ... Read more»

• What is Bioart?

  01/10/2005 → 01/10/2008
  Adrian Mackenzie, Paolo Palladino
  This collaborative project focuses on the contemporary visibility and proliferation of bioart, 'bioart' being the label for the intersection of the creative arts and those much discussed, contemporary ... Read more»

• Culture, politics, eschatology

  13/11/2012
  The Huffington Post discusses the proceedings of the international symposium on ‘Culture, Politics, Eschatology’. ... Read more»