Introducing New Member: Dr Patricia de Vries

As an assistant professor of philosophy at FASoS, Dr Patricia de Vries recently joined MACCH as an affiliated researcher. Her work resides at the intersection of philosophy, art and technology. More specifically, exploring artistic and social imaginaries of emerging technologies, and the anxieties that often underpin our relation to them.

In her PhD-research “Algorithmic Anxiety in Contemporary Art - A Kierkegaardian Inquiry into the Possible in Algorithmic Culture”, Patricia introduced “algorithmic anxiety” as a term for representations of the entanglement of the social and the algorithmic in contemporary art and design projects. While completing her PhD, she was a Research Fellow at Digital Asia Hub in Hong Kong, a think tank affiliated to the Berkman Klein Centre for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and she was a visiting scholar at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Prior to her position at FASoS, she worked as a researcher, teacher and project coordinator at the Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam. Her work there focused on the connections between art, theory, and activism in relation to the (digital) infrastructures of global finance.

Currently, Patricia is working on two research proposals. One on blockchain imaginaries and techno-moral change. She investigates how feminist blockchain projects explore ways to work towards social values such as solidarity, interdependence and care. The other research proposal focuses on the artificial womb and argues that a future-oriented discussion on the artificialisation of reproduction must include speculative design and science-fiction imaginaries.

As a newbie at FASoS/MACCH, Patricia would very much like to meet her new colleagues and hear what you are up to: p.devries@maastrichtuniversity.nl.