︎  News

SMR Summer Schools 2024: The School of "The Feminine in an Age of Anthropological Transformation" with Julia Kristeva   


It is our great pleasure to announce that the SMR Summer School 2024 under the course-direction of prof. Julia Kristeva will take place next September (exact dates to be announced in October) and will feature profs. Miglena Nikolchina and Katerina Kolozova as supporting instructors. The Topic of the school and its tentative title is "The Feminine in an Age of Anthropological Transformation." Call for applications will be launched next month through our website and social media.

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

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

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.

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.

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)

                                                                        
- 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:

- 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.