Tom Roberts is a geographer and Research Associate at the School of Physical, Environmental and Mathematical Sciences at UNSW Canberra.
Tom obtained a BA (hons) in Geography from the University of Oxford in 2008. He enrolled at the University of Bristol in 2010 and was awarded an MSc in Human Geography (Society in Space) in 2011, before successfully defending his doctoral thesis in 2015.
Tom's intellectual background is in social and cultural geography, with expertise in theories of affect, new materialism and post-humanist thought. His research addresses the ontological status of 'matter' within geography and cognate disciplines, in order to better understand the kinds of material processes implicated in contemporary spatial experience. Combining theoretical innovation with current empirical problematics, Tom's research around materiality problematizes the primacy of the human subject in relation to a variety of social and cultural contexts. These include: the primacy of affect in the architecture of consumption spaces; the emerging agencies of 'smart' materials and responsive objects; the digital materialities engendered by 3D-printing technologies; and the incorporeal materials generated through modes of contemporary artistic intervention.
Tom's theoretical influences include Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Alfred North Whitehead, Gilbert Simondon, Baruch Spinoza and Friedrich Nietzsche.
His work has been published in cultural geographies; Environment and Planning D: Society and Space; Environment and Planning A; Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers; and GeoHumanities.
