Professor Carolyn Pedwell

Professor in Digital Media

Research Overview

Carolyn Pedwell is Professor in Digital Media. She is a cultural and media theorist with an international reputation for her work on affect and artificial intelligence; digital media and culture; habits and social change; the politics of empathy; and feminist, queer, critical race and decolonial studies.

Carolyn is the author of three monographs: Revolutionary Routines: The Habits of Social Transformation (McGill-Queens UP, 2021); Affective Relations: The Transnational Politics of Empathy (Palgrave, 2014); and Feminism, Culture and Embodied Practice: The Rhetorics of Comparison (Routledge, 2010). She is also the co-editor (with Gregory J. Seigworth) of The Affect Theory Reader 2: Worldings, Tensions, Futures (Duke UP, 2023). Carolyn’s monograph in progress is Speculative Machines and Us: Intuition, AI, and the Making of Computational Cultures.

Prior to arriving at Lancaster, Carolyn was Professor of Cultural Studies and Media at the University of Kent; Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at Newcastle University; and ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London. Carolyn has been Visiting Scholar at the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies, University of Sydney; the Centre for the History of Emotions, Queen Mary, University of London; and the Gender Institute, London School of Economics (LSE). Carolyn completed her PhD in Gender Studies at the LSE.

Carolyn’s current research is focused on socio-political, cultural, and affective histories and futures of AI and digital computing. Her British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship (2024-2025), ‘Speculative Machines and Us: Intuition, AI and the Making of Computational Cultures’, is developing an affective post-war genealogy of human-machine relations in Britain and North America oriented around shifting conceptualisations of intuition, with reference to ‘artificial intuition’. Her Leverhulme Fellowship, ‘Digital Media and the Human: The Social Life of Software, AI and Algorithms’ (2020-2021), explored how digital and computational media are transforming ‘the human’. Her research has also been funded by the AHRC, ESRC and SSHRC.

Carolyn is a member of the Independent Social Research Foundation's international 'Social and Cultural Frameworks for Artificial Intelligence' research group. She was an Editor of the international journal Feminist Theory (Sage) between 2010-2020 and currently sits on the advisory board of the journal. She is also on the advisory board of Imbricate Press and an editorial borad member of Media Theory and Capacious journals.

Speculative Machines and Us: Histories and futures of AI
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Transformation in the Everyday: Affect, Habit and the Unconscious
Invited talk

Affect Theory for Uncertain Futures
Invited talk

The Digital Afterlives of Affect and Drive
Invited talk

Speculative Machines and Us: Intuition, AI, the the Making of Computational Cultures
Invited talk

Speculative Machines and Us: Intuition, AI, and the Making of Computational Cultures
Invited talk

Paula Bialski in Conversation with Carolyn Pedwell
Invited talk

AI and the Affective Ideologies of Common Sense
Invited talk

Intuition, Affect, and the Making of Computational Cultures
Invited talk

Intuition, Habit, and AI: The Making of Computational Cultures
Invited talk

Intuition as a 'trained thing': Sensing, Thinking and Speculating in Computational Cultures
Invited talk

The John Dewey Society 2024 Lecture: Habits, Speculative Pragmatism and Social Transformation
Invited talk

Affect and Affect Theory
Invited talk

Intuition, Affect, and the Making of Computational Cultures
Invited talk

Notes on the Affect Theory Reader 2
Invited talk

The Intuitive and the Counter-Intuitive: AI and the Affective Ideologies of Common Sense
Invited talk

The Intuitive and the Counter-Intuitive: AI and the Affective Ideologies of Common Sense
Invited talk

Intuition as a 'trained thing': Sensing, Thinking, and Speculating in Computational Cultures
Invited talk

Affective Entanglements: From Multiculturalism to The Politics of the Human
Invited talk

Revolutionary Routines: The Habits of Social Transformation
Invited talk

Intuition as a 'trained thing': Sensing, Thinking and Speculating in Computational Cultures
Invited talk

AHRC CHASE PhD Workshop Series: Material Evidence and Affective Responses: Archival Encounters and The Craft of Writing
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Berlant's Affective Legacy
Invited talk

Situating Emotion in Digital Culture
Invited talk

Algorithmic Optimisation and the Ethical Life of Habits
Invited talk

Revolutionary Routines: The Habits of Social Transformation
Invited talk

Speculative Machines and Us: Stories of More-than-Human Intuition
Invited talk

Revolutionary Routines: The Habits of Social Transformation
Invited talk

Capacious (Journal)
Editorial activity

Imbricate Press (Publisher)
Editorial activity

Revolutionary Routines: The Habits of Social Transformation
Invited talk

Feminist Theory (Journal)
Editorial activity

Media Theory (Journal)
Editorial activity

Decolonizing Empathy: Thinking Affect Transnationally
Invited talk

Habits of Solidarity: Algorithmic Technologies, Pre-figurative Politics, and Black Lives Matter
Invited talk

Re-mediating Social Change: Algorithmic Technologies, Pre-figurative Politics and Black Lives Matter
Invited talk

Re-mediating Social Change: Algorithmic Technologies, Pre-figurative Politics and Black Lives Matter
Invited talk

Inhabiting Political Moods
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

Feminist Theory (Journal)
Editorial activity