Professor Helen Hester

• Qualifications

  BA (University of East Anglia), MA (University of Sussex), MA (University of East Anglia), PGCHE (University of Chichester), PhD (University of Chichester)

• Memberships

  Feminist and Women’s Studies Association (UK and Ireland)

  Society for Cinema and Media Studies

  Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

I joined UWL from Middlesex University, where I served as a Lecturer in Promotional Cultures and Senior Lecturer in Media.

• Research and publications

  Books

  2022, Post-Work, London: Bloomsbury, 2022 (with Will Stronge). Under contract. 

  2021, After Work: The Fight for Free Time, London: Verso, 2022 (with Nick Srnicek). Under contract. 

  2018, Xenofeminism, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018. German translation: Merve, 2020. Italian translation: Nero, 2018. Spanish translation: Caja Negra, 2018. 

  2014, Beyond Explicit: Pornography and the Displacement of Sex, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2014.

  Edited Volumes

  2016, Special Issue: Theorizing Fat Sex, Sexualities, 8.1, 2016 (with Caroline Walters). 

  2015, Dea Ex Machina, Berlin: Merve, 2015 (with Armen Avanessian).

  Fat Sex: New Directions in Theory and Activism, Abingdon: Routledge, 2015 (with Caroline Walters). 

  Articles

  “Love’s Labours Lost: Post-Work and Social Reproduction,” Electra 10, 2020 (with Nick Srnicek).  

  “Why women deserve a four-day week,” International Politics and Society, 2020. 

  “Sapience + Care: Reason and Responsibility in Posthuman Politics,” Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 24.2, 2019. 

  “Care Under Capitalism: The Crisis of “Women’s Work,” IPPR: Progressive Review 24.4, 2018. 

  “Promethean Labours and Domestic Realism,” e-flux Architecture, 2017. 

  “Towards a Theory of Thing-Women,” Living in the Future 4, 2017. 

  “Echoing flesh: The ‘voluminous body’ in heterosexual hard core,” Sexualities 8.1, 2016. 

  “(Re)producing Futures without Reproductive Futurity: Xenofeminist Ecologies,” Laboratory Planet 5, 2016. 

  “Technically Female: Women, Machines, and Hyperemployment,” Salvage 3, 2016. 

  “Giffing a Fuck: Non-narrative Pleasures in Participatory Porn Cultures and Female Fandom,” Porn Studies 2.4, 2015 (with Sarah Taylor-Harman and Bethan Jones). 

  “Synthetic Genders and the Limits of Micropolitics,” …ment 6, 2015. 

  “Exchanging Bodily Fluids: Transubstantiations and the contemporary pornographic,” Inter/Alia: A Journal of Queer Studies 9, 2014. 

  “Rethinking Transgression: Disgust, Affect, and Sexuality,” Journal of Lesbian Studies 17.3-4, 2013.  

  ‘“Desiderio in Search of a Master’: Desire and the Quest for Recognition,” Forum: University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture and the Arts 6, 2008.

  Chapters

  “At Home with Platform Capitalism,” in Mira Wallis and Moritz Altenried (eds.), Platform Capitalism and the Crisis of Social Reproduction, Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot and Rosa-Luxemburg Foundation, 2021 (with Nick Srnicek). 

  “Everyone is an Art Form,” in Isabelle Malz (ed.), Everyone is an Artist. Cosmopolitan Exercises with Joseph Beuys, Berlin: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2021. 

  “Material Hegemony Now: Domestic Realism and Financial Capitalism,” in Giovanna Borasi (ed.), A New Society, Montreal: Canadian Centre for Architecture, 2021. 

  “Sensational Images: Digital Mediation and Visual Vocabularies of Gendered Affect,” in Leckie, Robert, and Sidsel Meineche Hansen (eds.), Second Sex War, Paris: Paraguay Press, 2021. In press. 

  “Gender is a Workplace Technology,” in Kivland, Sharon, and Rebecca Jagoe (eds.), On Care, London: Ma Bibliothèque, 2020.  

  “Sexing the Cyborg: Technology, Adaptation, and Prosthetic Gender,” in Mannucci, Valerio (ed.), Insufficient Armour, Milan: NERO, 2020. 

  “Sex Work in a Post-Work Imaginary: On Abolitionism, Careerism and Respectability,” in Cooke, Jennifer (ed.), New Feminist Studies: Twenty-first-century Critical Interventions, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.

  “Rise of the Robot Teenagers; or, Are Millennials Human?” in Edlinger, Thomas (ed.), New Society: The Donaufestival Reader Vol. 3, Krems: Donaufestival, 2019. 

  “Spectacular sex: In/visible Pleasures and Practices in Visual Media,” in  Shental, Andrey (ed.), Sites of the Non-evental, Moscow: Artwin Gallery, 2019. 

  “Vampire, Cannibal, Iconoclast: Displacing Genitality and Desecrating Genre,” in Stapleton, Rachel F., and Antonio Viselli (eds.), Iconoclasm: The Making and Breaking of Images, Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2019. 

  “After the Future: n Hypotheses of Post-Cyber Feminism,” in Jury, Sarah, Helen Kaplinsky and Lucy A. Sames (eds.), Alembic: The Kathy Rae Huffman Archive Reader, London: Arts Council England, 2018. 

  “The Crisis of Social Reproduction and the End of Work,” in BBVA OpenMind (ed.), The Age of Perplexity: Rethinking the World we Knew, London: Penguin Random House, 2018. 

  “Who is Laboria Cuboniks?” in Anker-Møller, Sara Emilie (ed.), Ovartaci and The Art of Madness, Aarhus: Museum Ovartaci and Kunsthal Charlottenborg, 2018. 

  “Xenofeminism,” in Braidotti, Rosi, and Maria Hlavajova (eds.), The Posthuman Glossary, London: Bloomsbury, 2018. 

  “Perverting the Explicit: Catherine Breillat’s Visual Vocabulary of Desire,” in Peberdy, Donna, and Darren Kerr (eds.), Tainted Love: Screening Sexual Perversity, London: I.B. Tauris, 2017. 

  “After the Image: Labour in Pornography,” in Laing, Mary, Katy Pilcher, and Nicola Smith (eds.), Queer Sex Work, Abingdon: Routledge, 2015.  

  “Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation,” in Avanessian, Armen, and Helen Hester (eds.), Dea Ex Machina, Berlin: Merve, 2015. (Under the collective pseudonym Laboria Cuboniks.) 

  “Weaponizing prurience,” in Korte, Barbara, and Frédéric Regard (eds.), Narrating Poverty and Precarity in Britain, Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014. 

  Book Reviews

  “Review of iMedia: The Gendering of Objects, Environments, and Smart Materials by Sarah Kember,” Feminist Theory, 18.2, 2017. 

  “Review of Sensational Pleasures in Cinema, Literature, and Visual Culture: The Phallic Eye, edited by Gilad Padva and Nurit Buchweitz,’ Sexualities, 19.8, 2016. 

  Interviews

  “Como feministas tenemos que exigir políticas que garanticen que los beneficios de las tecnologías sean distribuidos equitativamente,” Paula (interviewed by Emiliana Pariente), 10 November 2020. 

  “Contra lo immutable,” LUCA (interviewed by Nadia Baram), 20 October 2020. 

  “Ксенофеминизм: Философ Хелен Хестер о будущем гендера и технологиях,” Wonderzine (interviewed by Alexandra Savina), 26 February 2020. 

  “Tácticas del feminismo solidario,” Clarín: Revista N (interviewed by Gonzalo Mases), 4 January 2019. 

  “Xenofeminismo, Tecnologías de género y políticas de reproducción," Página 12 (interviewed by Luciana De Mello), 13 September 2018. 

  “Anders werden wir die kapitalistische Landschaft nicht verändern," Zeit Online (interviewed by Tobias Haberkorn), 3 June 2018. 

  “Doing Gender: Helen Hester on Xenofeminism,” The Quietus (interviewed by Robert Barry), 30 March 2018. 

  “Automation and Healthcare,” Autonomy (interviewed by Luke Richards), 1 December 2017. 

  “Particular Universals,” The New Inquiry (interviewed by Francis Tseng), 22 December 2016. 

  “Siri est aussi victime de harcèlement sexuel," i-D Magazine (interviewed by Ingrid Luquet-Gad), 16 March 2016. 

  Performances and Broadcasts

  The Guardian Science Weekly Podcast (interviewed by Alex Hern about the gendering of smart assistants), 29 September 2020 and 1 October 2020.  

  RTVE Radio 3, Efecto Doppler (interviewed by Elisa McCausland about xenofeminism, technology, and science fiction), 16 July 2019. 

  TV3 Catalunya, Quan arribin els marcians (interviewed by Jofre Font about gender and the refusal of work), 25 April 2019. 

  BBC Radio 5 Live, Afternoon Edition (interviewed by Nihal Arthanayake about abuse, gender, and online gaming), 9 October 2018.  

  “The (Dia)grammatology of Space” (a libretto for computer and synthetic voice, written with Virginia Barrett, Katrina Burch, and Marcin Pietruszewski). CTM Festival, Berghain, Berlin, 2 February 2016. 

  “Technosexuals” (a live radio broadcast for The Serpentine Gallery, with Katherine Angel). Transformation Marathon, Goethe Institute, London, 18 October 2015. 

• Conferences

  Invited talks

  'Revisiting Technofeminism.' Technofeminism Now, ICA, London, 17 June 2015.

  '[Porno]Graphic: Bracketing the Sexually Explicit in 'War Porn''. Fear of Missing Out, ICA, London, 31 May 2015.

  'From Cyberfeminism to Technofeminism.' Merve@Schinkel, Schinkel Pavillion, Berlin, 26 May 2015.

  'Technically Female: Women, Machines, and Hyperemployment.' Inhuman Symposium, Fridericianum, Kassel, 24 - 25 May 2015.

  'Post-Digital Anxieties and the Explosion of the Pornographic.' English Research Seminar Series, University of Surrey, Guildford, 29 April 2015.

  'The Imagined Futures of Gendered Technologies.' Future Polities, AutoItalia, London, 15 December 2014.

  'Synthetic Genders.' Speculative Tate, Tate Britain, London, 12 November 2014.

  'Actually Existing Accelerationisms.' Vienna Open Festival, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, 19 October 2014.

  'Feminism and Technology after Firestone.' Emancipation as Navigation, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 1 – 12 July 2014.

  'Molecular Politics: Re-engineering Gender and Sexual Embodiment in Preciado’s Testo Junkie.' Occupy the Future, Westminster University, London, 23 May 2014.

  'Displaced Paroxysms: Contemporary Visual Culture and the Generalized Affective Response.' Modern and Contemporary Research Seminar Series, Loughborough University, Loughborough, 30 April 2014.

  'Pharmacopornographic Embodiments.' Coming Off Clean, Corpus Christi College, Oxford University, Oxford, 18 March 2014.

• Research degree supervision

  Principal Supervisor

  The workers are doing it themselves? Strike action in the UK, 2008-2018
  (Callum Cant)

  Playing against the camera: tracing the emergence, labour and potential of a feminised photographing body
  (Rowan Lear)

  A critical investigation into the relationship between modernity, utopianism and post-work theory
  (Kyle Lewis)

  'This is my story': the role of emotions in online feminist activism in Brazil
  (Gabriela Loureiro)

  Mad Men, Meerkats and Microphones – the impact of voice overs on the effectiveness of UK radio & TV advertising from 1955.
  (Pam Myers)

  Second Supervisor

  They Call It Love: Wages of Housework and Emotional Reproduction
  (Alva Gotby - awarded November 2019)