The question I will pursue over the course of my research is 'can a robot perform psychoanalysis?'. The anticipated answer from a psychoanalyst is 'never!', while the answer from computer engineer would be 'inevitably'. To answer this question I am researching contemporary artificial intelligence, its history and applications, and the possibility of electronic 'self-awareness'. I am exploring the psychoanalytic question of what it is to be a subject, and whether this status is exclusive to humans. Additionally I am researching the split between clinical and theoretical psychoanalysis, and the effects that each domain has on the other as a consequence of this split. The commencement of this research will follow from my current studies concerning Freudian and Lacanian theory, specifically the linguistic and temporal subject of the unconscious; my analysis of distinction between clinical and theoretical psychoanalysis; critical theory of technology and historical materialism. My research will involve analysis of contemporary artificial intelligence development and the historical conditions which have proceeded from mass automation of industrial processes. I will conduct research into and develop a model of psychoanalysis as it is performed clinically and compare this procedure with its increasingly academicised theoretical counterpart. After establishing the distinction between these two domains, I will then explore the consequences of this distinction and its relation to the possibility of automated, computer preformed clinical psychoanalysis This research will be undertaken with reference to the historical conditions in which we find ourselves, and with the acknowledgment that any theory which attempts to model those conditions is also invariably a symptom and a product of those conditions.

PROJECT OBJECTIVES: - to use Koenigsberger's work to identify the range of expertise required by the international planning consultant and new bodies of knowledge, most especially 'tropical architecture' - to describe the networks of dissemination and influence that Koenigsberger engaged with and helped to produce, and to compare these with the networks of other international planning consultants - to situate these networks of expertise and knowledge in relation to the profession, institutions and practices of architecture.

The outbreak of COVID-19 gave rise to a cross-cutting debate in academic and public discourse ranging from the necessity and proportionality of the measures to the lens of public health inequalities based on class, race, gender and citizenship. This heated debate has escalated on the Eastern Aegean islands, where two-tier public health policies have been enacted through distinct legislative acts; intermittent measures for the general population, and, parallel measures targeting hotspot residents, prolonged seamlessly to date with fluctuating restrictions. For thousands of asylum seekers, COVID 19 containment measures compound existing mobility restrictions, in place since the implementation of EU-Turkey deal in March 2016. Existing sub-standards of living, triggering widespread condemnation, were backed by reactions of inappropriate and discriminative measures against hotspot residents. The EU and Greek State's stance on refugees/migrants amid the pandemic was neither unforeseen, nor to be circumscribed in the horizontal legitimacy discourse on human rights' balancing within the European liberal order. COVID-19 measures were introduced in Greece in a context where flows of asylum seekers have been framed as an 'asymmetrical threat' in public discourse, paving the way for the temporary suspension of access to territory and asylum justice. While authorities confronted asylum seekers at the land borders with the unsolicited assistance of far-right groups, dinghy arrivals in Eastern Aegean dropped and the first denouncements of Hellenic Coastguard pushbacks came to light. Xenophobia, parallel to the struggling solidarity, was reflected in locals' protests in the Aegean islands against the construction of new hotspots. Several months earlier, reception and asylum procedures had been (re)shaped by the contested L. 4636/2019, bottlenecking pre-2020 arrivals and heightening the risk of refoulement and inadequate international protection needs assessment. This project aims to examine the rights' discourse in the COVID-19 pandemic era in Eastern Aegean mobility/migration management with the border regime analytical concept as the point of departure. The main objective is analysing the reasoning underpinning pandemic law with regard to hotspots and its interaction with their material background. Hence, the focus will be on if and how the rights to life and health are interpreted, whose rights are protected, who is the incumbent to these obligations, and how and where the relevant provisions are to be implemented. Viewing the Greek/EU border as a 'dynamic area of contest and deceleration of the international labour power movement', the central hypothesis of the project is that COVID-related legislation has in its entirety played a distinct role in the policies over mobility and is aligned with the racial and class mediation of the current Greek and EU paradigm. Samos hotspot, the most obscure for some, is an indicative case study, since it operates more times above its capacity than any other hotspot in Greece, exacerbating any issue. The 'jungle' of unofficial makeshift structures adjacent to the hotspot is found the nearest to an island's capital town, providing a characteristic realm for manifestations of bordering, and is still outside scholars' spotlight.

Extreme weather events are commonplace in the United States but the legacy of Hurricane Katrina still reverberates throughout contemporary political, cultural and academic debate. The aftermath of Katrina as it unfolded in New Orleans not only raised key questions about race and national identity in 21st century America but it also raised the spectre of climate change in relation to a city built largely below sea level and increasingly exposed to hurricanes as a result of rapidly depleting barrier islands. This project suggests that post-Katrina New Orleans, which has so vividly captured and displayed key aspects of US history, provides us with a vital lens through which to project a future beyond the 'American century'. New Orleans has long posed as a kind of mirror-image of the triumphalist narrative of US identity as it developed in the twentieth century. The twentieth century saw the transformation of New Orleans from a bustling economic centre to a weak, service-based economy dominated by tourism. This has meant that the city has come to be associated with the time of leisure as opposed to that of work, a feature which has exacerbated its image in the popular and literary imagination as a place of decline and obsolescence - one that is in marked tension with the idea of relentless progress central to US national ideology. The advent of Hurricane Katrina, and the drowned black bodies that it brought to world attention, and which bore witness to the catastrophic consequences of US racial and environmental history, was in one sense a literal and horrifying fulfilment of the gothic fantasies that have long hovered over the city. In this way, and by invoking key internal fractures within the US, post-Katrina New Orleans emerges as a key site for analysis of the discourse of US decline that has been gaining ground since 9/11. This project thus asks: if Katrina is a 'teachable moment' (Barack Obama), how might it be drawn upon to better understand what the waning of US power means for the contemporary world? While post-Katrina New Orleans has lent some of the most desperate and dystopian imagery to the discourse of US decline, arguably it has also invoked the possibility of a re-awakening of democracy at the grassroots. The significance of the resurgence of community organizations in post-Katrina New Orleans calling for racial and environmental justice is demonstrated in the vast outpouring of creative and critical projects that reflect these developments. In analysing these emerging forms of social engagement and their interaction with post-Katrina artistic and cultural production, this project suggests that thinking 'after Katrina' might offer an alternative approach to thinking 'post-9/11'. This alternative can help us to re-orient our understanding of the changing status of the United States away from pessimistic renderings of the decline of a superpower towards a vision of a transnational, multi-racial nation in which New Orleans might represent the somewhat paradoxical template for the future. To this end, this project involves a cluster of research-related activities centred on the production of an interdisciplinary monograph which will engage with post-Katrina novels, memoir, films, literary critical discourses, eco-criticism, history, critical race theory and philosophy. It will constitute a distinctive intervention into American studies, promising to question the premise of the discipline: the centrality of the United States in cultural and geo-political terms. This monograph will be supported by and in turn support a series of research collaborations, including international exchanges, and it will also feed directly into various public-facing activities which I believe this kind of research calls for. It will contribute to understandings of the history, politics and culture of the contemporary United States, and will project ways of imagining its transfigured promise into the 21st century.