Utopia, Pedagogy, Care: A Conversation (with Ibtisam Ahmed, Elena Colmbo and Robyn Muir) In Baccolini, R. and Tower Sargent, L. (eds) Transgressive Utopianism: Essays in Honor of Lucy Sargisson Peter Lang: Switzerland (2021): 197-214.
A three-way conversation reflecting on utopianism and care in the writing and teaching of Lucy Sargisson.

Co-production: towards a utopian approach (with Kate Pahl)
International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 21(1) (2018): 105-117 This article outlines how co-production might be understood as a utopian method, which both attends to and works against dominant inequalities. It suggests that it might be positioned ‘within, against, and beyond’ current configurations of power in academia and society more broadly. It develops this argument by drawing on recent research funded through the UK’s Connected Communities programme, led by the Arts and Humanities Research Council; and by attending to arguments from the field of Utopian Studies. It explores particular issues of power and control within the field of co-production, acknowledging that neoliberalism both constrains and co-opts such practice; and explores methodological and infrastructural issues such that its utopian potential might be realised. [link]

Paying “Utopia” a Subversive Fidelity; or, An Affective Trip to Anarres
Utopian Studies, 27(2) (2016), 127-151 This article pays “subversive fidelity” to utopia by rethinking what might be meant by the “good,” “no,” and “place” and how they might be brought together in an ambiguous but productive consistency. Specifically, it does this by drawing on Deleuze’s reading of Spinoza’s ethics, Sara Ahmed’s concept of the “affect alien,” and Doreen Massey’s understanding of place. It then applies and develops the theoretical approach through a reading of Anarres, as described in Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel The Dispossessed. While the theory of utopia produced is intended normatively, the article also shows how it can be used as a methodology for the reading of specific places, as well as how it can be used alongside other utopian studies methods to read utopian texts. [link]

The Politics of Participatory Art
Political Studies Review, 15(1) (2017): 73-83The two books reviewed in this article engage with 'participatory art', in which artists mobilize people as the central medium of their work. Grant Kester's The One and the Many argues that such works have the potential to generate new communal forms that challenge neoliberal hegemony, whilst in Artificial Hells Claire Bishop argues that in dispensing with the negating praxis of the avant-garde they all too frequently end up reproducing its logics. Here, I suggest that if the binary that structures both their arguments is overcome a productive synthesis of their arguments can be made, although this still leaves a number of questions about the role that art might play in alternative forms of political organisation. [link]

Improvisation as Anarchist Organization
ephemera, 14(4), Special Issue on Anarchism and Critical Management Studies (2014): 1009-1030 The aim of this paper is to consider the practice of collective musical improvisation as a form of anarchist organization, exemplifying both its possibilities and its dangers. As such, I argue that it has significant pedagogical value for anarchists. I will also consider how capital has attempted to utilize improvisation, a phenomenon that highlights the fallacy of approaching anarchism simply as a theory of organization. In making these arguments, a number of areas of issues of importance for the intersection of anarchism and critical management studies (CMS) will be highlighted. The practice of ‘musicking’ will be raised as a hitherto underdeveloped area of significance for both areas; the relationship between critical management studies and anarchist thought will be explored through a grounding in practice; and the vital importance of thinking through the relationship of anarchist organizational forms to contemporary forms of capitalism and the concept of communism will be raised. [link]

Fail Again. Fail Better: Nomadic Utopianism in Deleuze & Guattari and Yevgeny Zamyatin
Political Perspectives 4(1) (2010): n.pag. This paper is an encounter between three seemingly disparate bodies of political thought: the co-authored works of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari; Yevgeny Zamyatin’s 1921 novel We and his essays Scythians and On Literature, Energy, Entropy and Other Matters; and works of utopian studies theory. By reading them creatively, it seeks to articulate a philosophy of ‘nomadic utopianism’ which resonates with both Deleuze and Guattari and Zamyatin’s political philosophies and offers an example of the ‘immanent, revolutionary, libertarian utopia[nism]’ Deleuze and Guattari call for in What Is Philosophy? (100). It is hoped that this paper will provide useful insights into all three bodies of work. It offers utopian studies a concept of ‘nomadic utopianism’, which seeks to further the turn away from perfection in recent utopian studies theory, whilst offering a new way of thinking the relationship between utopia (as place) and utopianism (as process). Meanwhile, it explicitly develops the utopianism inherent to Deleuze and Guattari’s work; countering claims that they are anti-utopian, or fleshing out the utopianism that Eugene W. Holland identifies in their work. Finally, this paper recasts Yevgeny Zamyatin as a writer with remarkable resonances with Deleuze and Guattari’s works and thus as an author who has much to say to the world of contemporary political philosophy - not least through the nomadic utopianism I identify in his work, something which challenges traditional readings of him as an anti-utopian author. [link]