Dr Adrian Mackenzie

PhD Supervision Interests

Technological and scientific cultures, social and cultural theory, media and cultural studies, especially in relation to new media, network cultures, critical design and post-genomic sciences.

Current and past PhD supervision:

Kingsley Dennis, 'New complexities: converging spaces of connectivity, communication, and collaboration' PhD, 2007 (co-supervised with J. Urry, Sociology)

Soren Mork Petersen, 'Common Banality: The Affective Character of Photo Sharing, Everyday Life and Produsage Cultures' PhD 2008 (co-supervised with T. L. Taylor, ITU Copenhagen)

Daniel Ashton, ' The industry of creativity: Economic frames, creative subjects and innovative technologies in process' PhD, 2009 (co-supervised with G. Gere, Institute for Cultural Research)

Kuo Wen-Ping, 'The production and consumption practices of online journalism in digital Taiwan' PhD 2009 (co-supervised with A. Cronin, Sociology)

Deidre Leahy, ' The epileptic as experimental subject'(co-supervised with P. Palladino, History)

Laura Houston, ' Inventive infrastructures - an exploration of mobile phone 'repair' cultures in Uganda' (co-supervised with L. Suchman, Sociology)

Charalampia Kerasidou, 'Ambient computing' (co-supervised with L. Suchman, Sociology)

Current Teaching

SOCL906 Science, Technology and Society

Research Interests

I'm very interested in the lives of data, especially in databases but also in data analysis, modelling and 'analytics.' At the moment, I'm focusing on on data as a way of thinking about 'BioIT convergences' across biological engineering, DNA synthesis and sequencing, clinical and research databases and visualization technologies. I'm looking at changes in the work, productivity and situation of life scientists, and on the transformations in technique, knowledge and products associated with bio-IT related developments. The wider stakes here includes the nature of promise, design, value, speculation, subjectivity and imagination in knowledge economies.

Draft papers

Every Thing Thinks: Video Codecs as Centres of Envelopment (May 2008)

Intensive Movement in Wireless Digital Signal Processing (May 2008)

'We want to do for biology what Intel does for electronics': re-factoring biology as a software engineering enterprise.(September 2008)

From open to objecting: in-situ publics in synthetic biology (November 2009)

Design in synthetic biology (November 2009)

Set (January 2010)

From BIOS to bios: bootstrapping openness in synthetic biology (March 2010)

Validating or objecting: public appeals in synthetic biology (May 2010)

More parts than elements: how databases multiply (Sept 2010)

Currently funded research activities

'Technolife: A transdisciplinary approach to the emerging challenges of novel technologies. Lifeworld and Imaginaries in Foresight and Ethics' (EU Framework Programme 7 - Science in Society)

Additional Information

Books

Mackenzie, A. Transductions: Bodies and Machines at Speed. London: Continuum, 2002.

Mackenzie, A. Cutting Code: Software and Sociality. New York: Peter Lang, 2006

Mackenzie, A. Wirelessness: Radical Network Empiricism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010.

Edited books

Bennett, Bruce, Marc Furstenau, and Adrian Mackenzie, eds. Cinema and Technology. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008.

Journal articles (2005-)

Mackenzie, A., 2005 Is the actual world all that must explained? The sciences and cultural theory. Cultural Values, 9(1), 101-116.

Mackenzie, A., 2006 Java: the virtuality of Internet programming. New Media & Society, 8(2), 441-66.

Mackenzie, A., 2006 Innumerable transmissions: Wi-Fi® from spectacle to movement. Information, Communications and Society, 9(6), 779-800.

Mackenzie, A., 2006 The meshing of impersonal and personal forces in technological action. Culture, Theory & Critique, 47(2), 197-212.

Mackenzie, A., 2005 The performativity of code: software and cultures of circulation. Theory, Culture & Society, 22(1), 71-92.

Mackenzie, A., 2005 The Problem of the Attractor: A Singular Generality Between Sciences and Social Theory. Theory, Culture & Society, 22(5), 45-66.

Mackenzie, A., 2005 The problem of the technological: event and excess relationality. Social Epistemology, 19(2/3), 1-19.

Mackenzie, A., 2005. Untangling the unwired: Wi-Fi and the cultural inversion of infrastructure. Space and culture, 8(3), 269-285.

Mackenzie, A., 2007. Wireless networks and the problem of over-connectedness. Media International Australia, (125), 94-105.

Mackenzie, A., 2008. Thinking animality and neurocultural selfhood. South Atlantic Quarterly, 107(1), 145-164.

Mackenzie, A., 2008. Wirelessness as experience of transition. FibreCulture, 13. Available at: http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue13/.

Mackenzie, A., 2008 The Affect of Efficiency: Personal Productivity Equipment Encounters the Multiple. ephemera: theory and politics in organization, 8(2). Available at: http://www.ephemeraweb.org/journal/8-2/8-2mackenzie.pdf.

Mackenzie, A. & Furstenau, M., 2009. The promise of makeability: digital video editing and the cinematic life. Journal of Visual Communication, 8(1), 5-22.

Mackenzie, A., 2009. Intensive movement in wireless digital signal processing: from calculation to envelopment. Environment and Planning A, 41(6), 1294-1308.

Book chapters (2005-)

Mackenzie, Adrian. "Stars, Meshes, Grids: Urban Network-Images and the Embodiment of Wireless Infrastructures " In The Enterprise City, edited by Anne Cronin and Kevin Heatherington. London & New York: Routledge, 2008.

Mackenzie, Adrian. "Internationalization." In Software Studies, edited by Mathew Fuller, forthcoming. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007.

Mackenzie, Adrian. "Codecs." In Software Studies, edited by Mathew Fuller, forthcoming. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008.

Mackenzie, Adrian. "Convolution and Algorithmic Repetition: A Cultural Study of the Viterbi Algorithm." In 24/7 Network Time, edited by Robert Hassan and Ron Purser. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2007.

Mackenzie, Adrian. "The Performativity of Code." In New Vitalities, edited by Mariam Fraser, Celia Lury and Sarah Kember. London: Sage, 2006.

Mackenzie, Adrian. "From Cafe to Parkbench: Wi-Fi and Technological Overflows in the City." In Technological Mobilities, edited by Mimi Sheller. London & New York: Routledge, 2005.

• The Social Life of Digital Data Objects

  01/10/2012 → 30/09/2015
  Ruth McNally, Adrian Mackenzie
  ... Read more»

• Data topography of NGS Genomes

  10/05/2012 → 31/08/2012
  Adrian Mackenzie, Ruth McNally
  While there is intense interest in the epistemic, economic, aesthetic, social and political values associated with ‘big data’, (Savage & Burrows, 2007; Latour et al., 2012; Halfpenny & Proctor, 20 ... Read more»

• Living Data: Making sense of health biosensors

  01/05/2011 →
  Celia Roberts, Adrian Mackenzie, Maggie Mort
  ... Read more»

• Data Flows in Genomic and Environmental Science

  01/01/2011 → 31/07/2011
  Adrian Mackenzie, Ruth McNally
  The aim of the theme is to re-describe how data moves in NGS (Next Generation Sequencing) genomic sciences and in ENS (Embedded Networked Sensing) environmental sciences. In the life sciences, NGS and ... 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»