Last week I was back in Berlin for the first time in nearly 18 months, participating in an event at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt entitled After the Wildly Improbable. Invited by the event’s curator, award-winning author Adania Shibli, I made a modest contribution to a broader effort by a whole a host of … More After the Wildly Improbable
Indiana Jones is returning to our screens. After the disappointment of The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull back in 2008 – a film widely critiqued for ‘jumping the shark’ or more specifically ‘nuking the fridge’ – Indy is now making a comeback in a more realistic manner. But rather than appearing on the big screen … More Punching Nazis just like Indiana Jones
Last week my colleague Simon Lindgren and I were in Amsterdam for a workshop dedicated to questions of materiality within the context of social movements’ use of digital media. The workshop, which I organised with Thomas Poell of the University of Amsterdam and Anastasia Kavada of the University of Westminster, involved loads of really interesting … More DAM BANKSY! Street Art’s Commercialization and Objectification
Last weekend I attended the opening of the Perpetual Uncertainty – Contemporary Art in the Nuclear Anthropocene exhibition that has been curated by Ele Carpenter of Goldsmiths University at Umeå’s Bildmusset. The exhibition which accompanies Carpenter’s new edited book, The Nuclear Culture Source Book, brings together the works of artists from all over the world … More Perpetual Uncertainty – Contemporary Art in the Nuclear Anthropocene at Umeå’s Bildmuseet
As one grows older the years seem to get shorter, which may explain why I am already able to announce the arrival of my first publication for 2017! A while back I was contacted by the editors of Mobility in History – the yearbook of the International Association for the History of Transport, Traffic and … More New Publication: Reviewing the Cultural Histories and Geographies of Public Transport in Berlin
A compendium of research dedicated to subterranean spaces across the world, edited by Paul Dobraszczyk, Carlos López Galviz and Bradley Garrett, has just been published by Reaktion and I am proud to say I have contributed three essays to it! Entitled Global Undergrounds: Exploring Cities Within, the book contains 80 essays written by a host … More New Publications: Global Undergrounds
As I start to write this post I am sitting at a departure gate in Stockholm’s Arlanda airport waiting for the late night flight north to Umeå. I am on my way back from Moscow where, for the last few days, I have been taking part in a conference at the Higher School of Economics’ … More Social Media and the Death of Serendipity (or on experiencing the ‘pre-bump’ for the first time)
Another month, another book review. I find that these are a good way to keep your critical eye in when working on a larger time consuming publication or acclimatising to a new discipline and research project. In this case it seems the upturn in my reviewing activity is linked to my move to Umeå and … More New Publication: Book Review in Media, Culture and Society
I know ‘they’ say you shouldn’t do book reviews – but I like them, still feel honored when asked to write them, and find they are still the best way to distill your thoughts on a new publication with relevancy to your research interests. Its for that reason that I am happy to announce that … More New Publication: Book Review in Cultural History
I think I am now safe in saying I have survived my first (full) Cold Swedish Winter. This morning we threw open all the windows and spring-cleaned the flat, while the snow has finally receded far enough to consider going out in normal footwear. It is probably because of this sense that the season is … More SNOW: Musing on my first (full) Cold Swedish Winter
Samuel Merrill 