Drone Futures E3: Katherine Chandler

On this episode, Michael Richardson is joined by Dr Katherine Chandler, a media studies scholar and author of Unmanning: How Humans, Machines and Media Perform Drone Warfare. First Michael interviews Kate about her work, then you’ll hear Kate deliver a talk based on her book.

This is the third in a six-part series called Drone Futures, based on a virtual public seminar series at the Media Futures Hub. Drone Futures brings together leading artists, humanities and social science scholars whose research intersects with the emerging field of drone studies. From the neo-colonial violence of contemporary wars in the Middle East and Africa to the strange histories of unmanned aerial vehicles to activist uses in struggles for justice, this seminar series looks to the past and present to think into the future. Visit https://www.dronewitnessing.com/drone-futures for more info.

Katherine Chandler studies the intersection of technology, media and politics through a range of scales and forms. She is an assistant professor in the Culture and Politics Program in the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University. Her first monograph, Unmanning: How Humans, Machines and Media Perform Drone Warfare, examines unmanned aircraft from 1936 - 1992. She asks how life and death are adjudicated through conditions organized as if control were ''unmanned'' and outlines how politics is disavowed as a result. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley with a Designated Emphasis in New Media. You can learn more about her work at http://katherinechandler.net/.

Michael Richardson is Senior Research Fellow at the University of New South Wales, examining the intersection of war, culture and technology. https://twitter.com/richardson_m_a

Media Futures Hub works at the intersection of media and cultural studies to shape the theories, methods and practices needed for more just media futures. https://twitter.com/MediaFuturesHub