︎ News
Update of the Call for the SMR Physis Summer School 2025
The Call for the SMR Physis Summer School 2025 is extended for 5 more spots for those who wish to participate by arranging their own accommodation in Olympiada - in other words, there is no more accommodation available on the Campus - and for 10 more who wish to attend online. The deadline for this limited extension is March 20th, 2025.
Update of the SMR ICP Spring Semester Call: An Addition to the program
Ben Woodard
Title The Scales of Genetics: The politics of contemporary genetics (May, 2025)
For those already enrolled, adding Ben Woodard's course to the one(s) you have already chosen entitles you to a discount as if the course were announced at the time of the program launch.
For the newly enrolled, the fees for individual courses, announced at the start of the program (see the Call here) , apply for the course "The Scales of Genetics: The politics of contemporary genetics" as well. You can also add one of the three remaining courses (or all three of them) from the spring semester. By doing that, you are entitled to the discount as stated in the original call.
Deadline for application: 15th of March 2025
Application form
Title: The Scales of Genetics: The politics of contemporary genetics (May, 2025)
Description: From socio-biology, to forensic DNA profiling, to genetic genealogies. the behavioral, criminal, and other statistical extrapolations of genetics often hides its weak probabilities and contingencies under a veil of unassailable scientific ‘fact.’ To this end this project will examine numerous high profile cases and events (such as the OJ Simpson murder trial, the apprehension of the Golden State Killer, to anti-black mass shootings using genomic studies as motivation) to articulate the ‘common sense’ perception of genes as keys to social dynamics. In addition, this project will look at how the popular conceptions of DNA have unfortunately collided with the resuscitation of the alt-right and its widespread disinformation campaigns about correlations between race, IQ, and sex.
Bio: Ben Woodard is currently an affiliated fellow at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry in Berlin. He received his PhD in Theory and Criticism from Western University in 2016. From 2017–2020 he was a postdoctoral researcher at the IPK (Institute of Philosophy and Sciences of Art) at Leuphana University where he completed a habilitation on the analytic/continental divide in the history of philosophy. Since 2020 Ben has lectured at the Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy, the School of Materialist Research, and the New Centre for Research and Practice.He is the author of numerous articles and three books: Slime Dynamics: Generation, Mutation and the Creep of Life (2012), On an Ungrounded Earth: Towards a New Geophilosophy (2013), and Schelling’s Naturalism: Motion, Space, and the Volition of Thought (2019). He has two forthcoming books: Uninhabited: Science Fiction and the Decolonial (Zero Books) and F.H. Bradley and the History of Philosophy: Animating a Lost Idealism (Edinburgh University Press).
Important update related to the PHYSIS Summer School (August, 2025) at the SMR Campus in Greece: The prospective participants of the Summer School are invited to present paper at three symposia/panels including in the afternoon part of the program.
You are invited to present in the form of a panel for which you should also submit a short abstract in addition to your application form which can be found here: https://schoolofmaterialistresearch.org/Call-for-Applications-for-the-Summer-School-PHYSIS-2025
Topic 1: “Formalizing humanities in conversation with the STEM sciences, is it possible and do we need it?”
“Is a middle ground formal language shared by scientists in the humanities, and in particular philosophers, and the STE(a)M scientists possible? What is the “noise” in communication in each of the areas respectively as well as between them that should be eliminated, and what is the noise that should be isolated to study because it is productive?” Formalization of language (and detecting its limits) is not the same as analytic philosophy; quite to the contrary, any concept that has emerged from philosophy for the sciences to discuss or consider it (such as “extended mind” or “eliminative”) is hardly a product of analytic philosophy, because either one deal with a borderline metaphor (“extended mind”) or a metaphysical question of “matter” and “materialism.” In order to avoid abstract speculations we will seek to apply the conversation on the problem of "Consciousness and subjectivity." Keynotes: Paul Cockshott, Vera Buehlman (TBC) and Miglena NIkolchina (TBC).
Topic 2: “Arts, Nature, Technology”
Physis - nature or "nature" - as understood, treated, mimetically or anti-mimetically reconceived in the arts is of relevance to philosophy, sciences and the philosophy of science just as well as it constitutes a relevant conversation in itself. We are interested in visual and performing arts and other art forms and in all periods, from antiquity to the contemporary "post-humanist" conversations, informed by the notions of "planetareity" (and they are multiple, from Spivak to Hui, from Marsili and Milanese to Bratton and Gilman, from Nail to the policy documents of the "twin transition" of Europe, and more).
Topic 3: “What would constitute Capitalism's final contradictions, and how do they serve to form class consciousness?”
We are witnessing an increasingly authoritarian form of global scale governance of both the big and small capitalist political-economies. Is Marx correct in arguing that the inherent contradictions of the capitalist-bourgeois social contract become impossible to be contained in and sustain a seemingly coherent world order (our paraphrase) which gives rise to the emergence of class consciousness? Are we currently living in such a moment, and how does the contradiction nature as resource (to be exploited) vs technology (capitalist industry) sustain itself in such a context? Are we witnessing new forms of protest or revolutionary consciousness which does not necessarily need to be class consciousness? What constitutes class consciousness of the Proletariat (understood as the army of all waged labor, regardless of whether employed or "a reserve army" of labor)?
Partnership with Berggruen Institute Europe
We are proud to announce our partnership with Berggruen Institute Europe (Venice) in the execution of the program of the Summer School Physis, taking place at our Campus in Stagira in August 2025. For more information, check out the Summer Institute link in our front page menu of the website.
Call for Applications
Informal Intensive Study Courses: Integrated Credit Program, Spring Semester of 2025
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The call for SMR’s 2025 Spring Semester Integrated Credit Program is now open! As always, our intensive study program grants access to the original research of our teachers and engages you in a research-as-study approach, merging topics from philosophy, the sciences, and the arts.
In Spring Semester 2025 you can participate in the courses
taught by David Roden, ANTI/GONES (Athena Athanasiou and Elena Tzelepis), Daniel Sacilotto, Daniel Tutt, Haela Hunt-Hendrix, Katarina Kolozova, Joel White, and Frank Engster. Find all the information about the courses and application details at this link.
Materialism is a theme that intersects all areas and topics not only to be defended in its many forms but also to be challenged in a productive fashion. Marxism features prominently too, but we also open space for discussions of religion, Nietzsche, posthumanism, feminism and much more. Our two feminist courses are thought collectively and emerge from actors who either way function collectively (the Anti/Gones collective, whereas Haela Hunt-Hendrix is affiliated to Liturgy while teaching here jointly with Katerina Kolozova). Here is a summary of the overall content of the program: in Tutt’s course, Nietzsche and Marx are examined as productive antagonists whose insights radically diverge from one another, but whose itineraries of thought and investigations share a surprising degree of similarity; Anti/Gones will invite us to delve into “Antigone’s act”: her resistance and dissent, focusing on the dialectics between subjection and subjectivity; we will engage in 6 sessions offered by Engster dealing with the new ways of reading Marx’ Capital revisiting Marx-oriented social critique in the 1960s, with a focus on the new reading of Marx in Germany: the critique of the commodity form and the return of philosophy to Marxism: Georg Lukács, Eugen Paschukanis, Alfred Sohn-Rethel, Walter Benjamin, to name a few; we will offer introduction into Roden’s “unbound posthumanism, the disconnection thesis and the problem of posthuman agency, Nietzschean agency and hyperagency; Sacilotto will present a new form of materialist epistemology by way of engaging in examining an ontological matrix that challenges the idealist or “correlationist” results of post-Kantian philosophy, while thinking of the material conditions that present a limit to life (death), and even to materiality itself as a whole (extinction); Joel White will offer an in-depth examination of the concept of logomachy transduced as a thermoinformatic logic of sense, revisiting the notion of logomachy from Plato to Derrida via discussions from the fields of physics and related STEM fields; an artist and a political philosopher, Hunt-Hendrix and Kolozova will engage in examining the links between faith, religion, femininity, Marxism and orthodox gnosis.
The online and onsite programs, upcoming calls
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In the year 2024-2025, we will be integrating the online programs for credit (Integrated Credit Program, what used to be called Intensive Study Programs) as well as the open seminars offered online *and* the on-site program at our Campus in Olympiada - Greece (what was once ancient Stageira). The calls remain separate for the online and onsite programs respectively, however we intend to introduce a thematic as well as a format continuity between the two: We will offer high quality online experience for those participating via zoom in the Summer Schools in Greece rendering them fully hybrid, as well as onsite opportunities to meet and exchange ideas with those enrolled in the online programs. Some of the confirmed speakers for next year include: Carlo Rovelli, Joel White, Frank Engster, Thomas Nail, Daniel Sacilotto, Katarina Kolozova, Adam Nocek and many more.
We are proud to announce our partnership with Berggruen Institute Europe (Venice) in the execution of the program of the Summer School Physis, taking place at our Campus in Stagira in August 2025. For more information, check out the Summer Institute link in our front page menu of the website.
Call for Applications
Informal Intensive Study Courses: Integrated Credit Program, Spring Semester of 2025
The call for SMR’s 2025 Spring Semester Integrated Credit Program is now open! As always, our intensive study program grants access to the original research of our teachers and engages you in a research-as-study approach, merging topics from philosophy, the sciences, and the arts. In Spring Semester 2025 you can participate in the courses taught by David Roden, ANTI/GONES (Athena Athanasiou and Elena Tzelepis), Daniel Sacilotto, Daniel Tutt, Haela Hunt-Hendrix, Katarina Kolozova, Joel White, and Frank Engster. Find all the information about the courses and application details at this link.
Materialism is a theme that intersects all areas and topics not only to be defended in its many forms but also to be challenged in a productive fashion. Marxism features prominently too, but we also open space for discussions of religion, Nietzsche, posthumanism, feminism and much more. Our two feminist courses are thought collectively and emerge from actors who either way function collectively (the Anti/Gones collective, whereas Haela Hunt-Hendrix is affiliated to Liturgy while teaching here jointly with Katerina Kolozova). Here is a summary of the overall content of the program: in Tutt’s course, Nietzsche and Marx are examined as productive antagonists whose insights radically diverge from one another, but whose itineraries of thought and investigations share a surprising degree of similarity; Anti/Gones will invite us to delve into “Antigone’s act”: her resistance and dissent, focusing on the dialectics between subjection and subjectivity; we will engage in 6 sessions offered by Engster dealing with the new ways of reading Marx’ Capital revisiting Marx-oriented social critique in the 1960s, with a focus on the new reading of Marx in Germany: the critique of the commodity form and the return of philosophy to Marxism: Georg Lukács, Eugen Paschukanis, Alfred Sohn-Rethel, Walter Benjamin, to name a few; we will offer introduction into Roden’s “unbound posthumanism, the disconnection thesis and the problem of posthuman agency, Nietzschean agency and hyperagency; Sacilotto will present a new form of materialist epistemology by way of engaging in examining an ontological matrix that challenges the idealist or “correlationist” results of post-Kantian philosophy, while thinking of the material conditions that present a limit to life (death), and even to materiality itself as a whole (extinction); Joel White will offer an in-depth examination of the concept of logomachy transduced as a thermoinformatic logic of sense, revisiting the notion of logomachy from Plato to Derrida via discussions from the fields of physics and related STEM fields; an artist and a political philosopher, Hunt-Hendrix and Kolozova will engage in examining the links between faith, religion, femininity, Marxism and orthodox gnosis.
The online and onsite programs, upcoming calls
In the year 2024-2025, we will be integrating the online programs for credit (Integrated Credit Program, what used to be called Intensive Study Programs) as well as the open seminars offered online *and* the on-site program at our Campus in Olympiada - Greece (what was once ancient Stageira). The calls remain separate for the online and onsite programs respectively, however we intend to introduce a thematic as well as a format continuity between the two: We will offer high quality online experience for those participating via zoom in the Summer Schools in Greece rendering them fully hybrid, as well as onsite opportunities to meet and exchange ideas with those enrolled in the online programs. Some of the confirmed speakers for next year include: Carlo Rovelli, Joel White, Frank Engster, Thomas Nail, Daniel Sacilotto, Katarina Kolozova, Adam Nocek and many more.
The Summer Institute of SMR in Olympiada Greece with
John Ó Maoilearca, Thomas Nail and Achille Mbembe (TBC):
"Death, Movement, Change and Transformation: The Domain of Matter" (15-22 September 2024)
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"Why has something as simple as movement posed such enormous difficulties for philosophers and scientists in the Western tradition when other traditions have not had the same trouble? Many of the greatest minds of Western history have dedicated their lives to the discovery of something genuinely immobile that could explain why things move," is the question from which the three master classes offered by Thomas Nail depart. Nail's series of classes is called Matter and Motion: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Movement. In the elaboration of his set of master classes offered as part of the summer school, titled "As Above, So Below: Correspondences, the Supernothing, and the Hyperbolic," John John Ó Maoilearca says "Here, the ‘non-‘ will be seen to operate in full plenitude, though at another level/scope/temporality (rather than ex nihilo – from the inert void below), The ideas of destruction and negation are consequently re-rendered as substitution, confusion, or destructive interference between levels." Achille Mbembe, who has initially confirmed his participation (we are expecting a reconfirmation of dates and topics) is invited to revisit his materialist radicalisation of the concept of necropolitics he explored as part of the SMR Intensive Study Courses in Fall 2021. The Summer School is scheduled for 15 to 22 of September 2024, and will take place at SMR's Campus in what used to be ancient Stagira (Aristotle's birthplace) now the town of Olympiada located on the coast of the Aegean Sea, not far from Mount Athos and near to Thessaloniki and its International Airport). The official call for applications will be launched in a matter of days.
The Summer Institute of SMR in Olympiada Greece with John Ó Maoilearca, Thomas Nail and Achille Mbembe (TBC): "Death, Movement, Change and Transformation: The Domain of Matter" (15-22 September 2024)
"Why has something as simple as movement posed such enormous difficulties for philosophers and scientists in the Western tradition when other traditions have not had the same trouble? Many of the greatest minds of Western history have dedicated their lives to the discovery of something genuinely immobile that could explain why things move," is the question from which the three master classes offered by Thomas Nail depart. Nail's series of classes is called Matter and Motion: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Movement. In the elaboration of his set of master classes offered as part of the summer school, titled "As Above, So Below: Correspondences, the Supernothing, and the Hyperbolic," John John Ó Maoilearca says "Here, the ‘non-‘ will be seen to operate in full plenitude, though at another level/scope/temporality (rather than ex nihilo – from the inert void below), The ideas of destruction and negation are consequently re-rendered as substitution, confusion, or destructive interference between levels." Achille Mbembe, who has initially confirmed his participation (we are expecting a reconfirmation of dates and topics) is invited to revisit his materialist radicalisation of the concept of necropolitics he explored as part of the SMR Intensive Study Courses in Fall 2021. The Summer School is scheduled for 15 to 22 of September 2024, and will take place at SMR's Campus in what used to be ancient Stagira (Aristotle's birthplace) now the town of Olympiada located on the coast of the Aegean Sea, not far from Mount Athos and near to Thessaloniki and its International Airport). The official call for applications will be launched in a matter of days.
Deadline for applications for the Summer School with Julia Kristeva, Miglena Nikolchina and Katarina Kolozova, "The Feminine in an Age of Anthropological Transformation"
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Deadline for applications for the Summer School with Julia Kristeva, Miglena Nikolchina and Katarina Kolozova, "The Feminine in an Age of Anthropological Transformation" (Dates: 8th to 15th of September 2024, Olympiada, Greece) is December 31st, 2023 or January 1st, 2024 at 18.00 CET. Here is the link to the program and the application form
Reid Kane: Marx and Engels and the Dialectic of Theory and Practice
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It is our pleasure to announce the Special Program "Marx and Engels and the Dialectic of Theory and Practice" to be delivered by Reid Kane beginning with mid February 2024 in the course of 5 to 8 weekends. The program is open to everyone and free of charge - please email us at schoolofmaterialistresearch@gmail.com or by filling out this form to book your spot in this zoom classroom. More details soon.
It is our pleasure to announce the Special Program "Marx and Engels and the Dialectic of Theory and Practice" to be delivered by Reid Kane beginning with mid February 2024 in the course of 5 to 8 weekends. The program is open to everyone and free of charge - please email us at schoolofmaterialistresearch@gmail.com or by filling out this form to book your spot in this zoom classroom. More details soon.
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SMR Summer Schools 2024: The School of "The Feminine in an Age of Anthropological Transformation" with Julia Kristeva
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The application form is available in this link containing the full program, aplication form and the relevant practical info. Please, be informed that the selection process is based on a single key criterion: your motivation (”Please indicate what is your interest in the summer school program”), backed up by your academic profile (”short bio”) to be stated in the form itself. The call for applications is open until December 31, 2023. The results of the selection process will be available 15 days after the closing of the Call.
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Extended deadline for the Integrated Credit Program
We have extended the deadline for applying for the Integrated Credit Program Fall Semester 2023-24, now the new deadline is the 11th of September. Find out more at https://schoolofmaterialistresearch.org/Integrated-Credit-Program-Fall-Semester-2023-2024
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The scholarship policy
Out of all of the applications we will choose four candidates (two will be awarded full scholarship and two will receive partial) based on their motivation statements in the application forms, and on their economic situation. We applied the same principle last year as well. We should perhaps add that there will be a separate scholarship call for the summer school in Greece (confirmed course leader is Julia Kristeva, with Miglena Nikolchina; will be able to confirm more names soon). However, those applying to the ICP this fall are automatically going to receive a discount for the summer school https://schoolofmaterialistresearch.org/Integrated-Credit-Program-Fall-Semester-2023-2024
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News about the application form deadline Integrated Credit Program
We apologize for the technical difficulties with our application form! We have fixed the error and have, therefore, extended the deadline to September 4th, 2023. Again, many apologies: now, the credit course option is properly enabled, including its discount options.
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Intensive Study Courses/Program Becomes Integrated Credit Program
We are pleased to announce that our concept of an informal graduate level study program, called "Intensive Studies Courses/Program" (abbreviated as ISP or ISC), will be renamed into Integrated
Credit
Program.
It will be offered for a range of 1 to 4 ECTS (European Credit Transfer System) points or the US equivalent in credits, depending on workload. A single credit as per the European Credit Transfer System is the equivalent to 28 hours of work which include students' individual research, preparations, presentations etc., and do not come down to a time spent in class. Courses are intensive, require originality, creativity and are thus heavily labor intensive. Faculty essentially presents their original work and students' involvement in the process of study amounts to research and experimentation in the virtual classroom.
Courses could also be taken by auditors who do not seek a certificate.
A combination of more than one course allows for a discount as well as leads to a higher number of ECTS score certificates.
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Heads of Units - announcement
We are happy to announce the fantastic latest addition to the leadership of SMR, our Heads of Units who are involved in planning both aspects of the educational program (Integrated
Credit
Program Courses/Intensive Study Courses) and of potential research initiatives as well as practical activities carried out as part of SMR and adjacent projects.
Amanda Beech: Art, Media, and Speculation (AMS)
Thomas Nail: Philosophy, Matter, and Consciousness (PMC)
Patricia Reed: Design, Technology, and Materialization (DTM)
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We are happy to announce there are free slots for our most recent addition to the Fall 22/Spring 23 semester, and you are welcome to apply for it separately or combine it with the other courses already offered in Spring 2023. The course is taught by Daniel Sacilotto, and is entitled: “Materialism and Eschatology: A Genealogy of Modern Thanatropism,” which will be taking place this June. Below you will also be able to find the full description of his course as well as his bio and the application form.
Description of course:
This seminar explores how modern philosophy conceives of different eschatological narratives in exploring methodological conditions to realize a materialism that traverses the aftermath of the critical turn and its anti-realist consequences. Radicalizing the tenets of Kant’s attempt to think of the conditions of all possible experience as the limits of cognition in a philosophy of finitude, we shall see how different thinkers sought to traverse the idealist or “correlationist” results of transcendental idealism, in order to think of the material conditions that present a limit to life, and even to materiality itself.
Read his full bio here
Link to Application here:
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SMR is proud to announce its parternship with GERM (Green Educational and Research Methodologies). GERM is an academic, research and cultural industry company registered in Estonia, collaborating with SMR on an organizational and programmatic level covering the Intensive Study Programs. It is specialized in international collaborations enabled by the Estonian digital mobility policies promulgating international projects in culture, research and arts.
-The application deadline for SMR’s Intensive Study Program for Fall/Winter 2022-23 has been extended from August 25th to August 31st. You can find the full call for enrollment here.
- SMR is absolutely thrilled to announce the preliminary list of faculty for its upcoming Intensive Study Program for Fall/Winter 2022-23, which you can view here.
- The application deadline for the Spring Semester of Intensive Study Courses has been extended until March 22, 2022.
- Philippe Morel's talk as part of the Architecture Panel has been rescheduled from March 10th to March 18th. If you have already registered on our Eventbrite you will still receive a Zoom link for the new date. If you have not yet registered for his talk, please make to sure to register for the 18th.
- The official brochure for SMR’s Spring Semester of Intensive Study Courses is now available! You can access the interactive version here, or get a downloadable version by clicking on the image below.
- The call for SMR’s Spring Semester of Intensive Study Courses has now been launched, you can find all of the information about the courses and how to apply here.
- You can now register for SMR’s first Special Program: Essays on the Architectonic Body (for free), which features the following illustrious speakers:
Claudia Pasquero, Roberto Bottazzi, Ludger Hovestadt, Philippe Morel, Gerald Nestler, and Vera Bühlmann. The talks will take place over February/March, 2022, and you can register on our Eventbrite here
-SMR’s Open Seminar Series is continuing this January with the follwing distinguished speakers giving lectures: Rick Elmore, Hanno Pahl, Paul Reynolds, Jordanco Sekulovski, Nina Power, Rick Dolphijn, and Nandita Biswas Mellamphy. As always, the seminars are free, and open to everyone, you merely need to register and you will receive a Zoom link via email before the given seminar. You can find all of the information on the seminars as well as the registration link here:
- The School of Materialist Research is proud to announce that its next series of Open Seminars will kick off in the new year, on January 8th, and will last until January 23rd. More information on the seminars will be revealed soon, and everyone will be able to register through our eventbrite, via the School of Materialist Research website, as of Dec 30th. The current list of speakers for this set of seminars include: Nandita Biswas Mellamphy, Hanno Pahl, Nina Power, Paul Reynolds, Rick Elmore, Rick Dolphijn, Jordanco Sekulovski, and Stanimir Panayotov. More information will follow soon.
- The School of Materialist Research is proud to share a call for papers for a brilliant special edition of a brilliant journal that is being edited by two of SMR’s Directors: Katerina Kolozova, and Vera Bühlmann. The special issue, which is part of the journal: Technophany, is entitled "Technē and Feminism." This issue of Technophany will raise the question of whether and how second wave feminism’s use of the notion of technology may have been premised on a specific treatment of nature, and also whether and how poststructuralist feminism may not still be perpetuating the somatophobia so present in Western rational thought, as discussed, for instance, in Irigaray’s Speculum of the Other Woman.
The average required length of a contribution is 6,000 words, accompanied by a 200-word abstract. For anyone interested you can send your abstracts to the following email: techneefeminism@gmail.com before 15th February 2022. As for the house style of formatting (style of referencing and related issues), and the submission process itself, please follow the Technophany submission guidelines found here: http://journal.philosophyandtechnology.network/submission-guidelines/. Likewise, you can find the full call on the Technophany website here: https://tinyurl.com/2p8nznxp
- The School of Materialist Research and its Intensive Study Program for ECTS/US certificates, offering courses with Achille Mbembe, Paul Cockshott, Anne-Françoise Schmid and her team, Amanda Beech and Katerina Kolozova and Thomas Nail, is pleased to announce that the organizers have granted scholarships (partial or full, or other forms of financial assistance) to more than half of the students, the vast majority of them being from the global South. Out of 54 enrolled students, 29 have received full or partial scholarship or assistance.
This would have not been possible without the spirit of comradery shared by the faculty, the founders and the directors of SMR and their teams.
We thank our faculty for their generosity in joining this grass-root university level experiment in new forms of education, combining research and commitment to change toward more just societies and a sustainable planet.
- ECTS credit certificates of 1 credit are offered by the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis (NICA) for attendance of courses by graduate students in the Netherlands.
Click here for more.
