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About Tom
Dr Tom Roberts is a Senior Lecturer in cultural geography and Geography Stream Coordinator in the School of Science at UNSW Canberra, University of New South Wales. He holds a BA Hons in Geography from the University of Oxford (2008), an MSc in Human Geography: Society & Space from the University of Bristol (2011), and a PhD in Geography from the University of Bristol (2015). Following his doctoral studies, Roberts joined UNSW Canberra as a Senior Lecturer, where he originates and convenes postgraduate courses such as Understanding Socio-Technical Systems: Ideas, Spaces & Cultures, and undergraduate courses including Human Geographies of Environmental Change. He supervises PhD students on diverse topics, including rethinking the materiality of colour through Deleuze (completed 2024), affective dreams for Iranian women (2025), and current projects on resilience through digital photography and posthuman spectatorship.
Roberts' research centers on cultural geography, with specializations in more-than-human geography encompassing post-humanism and new materialism, relational thinking through assemblage theory and process philosophy, and non-anthropocentric theories of perception, experience, and subjectivity informed by post-phenomenology and affect theory. He advances non-representational methodologies such as material ethnographies and experimental writing practices, exploring material agency in technologically-mediated environments like artificial intelligence, smart materials, and 3D-printing. His contributions address science, technology, and society, including engagements with Spinoza's Ethics, Deleuze's philosophy, and Whitehead's process philosophy. Key publications include 'Negotiating trust in AI-enabled navigation technologies: imaginaries, ecologies, habits' (Social & Cultural Geography, 2025, with A. Lapworth, L. Koh, M. Ghasri); 'Refusing clichés: artificial imagination in the synthetic photography of Kevin Abosch' (Cultural Geographies, 2025, with A. Lapworth, R. Carter-White); 'Vital aspirations for geography in an era of negativity: Valuing life differently with Deleuze' (Progress in Human Geography, 2021, with J.D. Dewsbury); 'From ‘world’ to ‘earth’: non-phenomenological subjectivity in Deleuze and Guattari's geophilosophy' (Subjectivity, 2022); and book chapters such as 'Rethinking research with Deleuze: Data as difference' (2025) and 'Guattari's incorporeal materialism' (2018). Roberts has secured funding including the 2022 UNSW Canberra AI Seed Fund as co-investigator for Exploring Trust with Artificial Intelligence, and 2019 awards from the Promoting High Quality Research Papers Scheme and Science at the Shine Dome for early- to mid-career researchers. His scholarship influences conceptual debates in geography on vitalist methodologies, human-machine relations, and socio-technical systems.
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