Dr Wahida Khandker
Senior Lecturer
My profile
Biography
Academic and professional qualifications
BA (Hons) Philosophy and Literature (Warwick)
MA Continental Philosophy (Warwick)
PhD Philosophy (Warwick)
Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice
Higher Education Academy Fellow
External examiner roles
Staffordshire University (2017 - 2021)
Expert reviewer for external funding bodies
Peer reviewer for:
The Journal of the British Society for the History of Philosophy
The Canadian Journal of Philosophy
The Southern Journal of Philosophy
Mind and Matter
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
Journal of Philosophical Research
Reviews of proposals and manuscripts for:
Bloomsbury
Oxford University Press
Palgrave MacMillan
Peter Lang
Rowman and Littlefield
Membership of professional associations
Member of the Society for European Philosophy, Executive Committee
Member of the British Philosophical Association
Teaching
Postgraduate teaching
Bergson and Neo-vitalist Thought (MA)
Subject areas
Philosophy
Research outputs
My research interests span continental philosophy from the nineteenth century to contemporary cross-disciplinary explorations across process philosophy, biology, environmentalism, the arts, and Critical Animal Studies.
Philosophy, Animality, and the Life Sciences (2014)
My first monograph focuses on the relationship between ‘neo-vitalism’ (Henri Bergson, Georges Canguilhem, Michel Foucault, Alfred North Whitehead, Donna Haraway) and Critical Animal Studies. The book seeks to uncover the historical progression of concepts of animal life to understand the logic of the human-animal distinction at play across philosophy, the life sciences and medicine. I focus on the categorization of certain forms and functions of life as ‘pathological,’ and the mobility of this categorization (the changes in what is considered normal and pathological over time) both in philosophy and the sciences in question to challenge the use of animals for scientific research.
Process Metaphysics and Mutative Life: Sketches of Lived Time (2020)
In this book I explore the connections between process philosophy, biology, and physics, as a means of thinking about the nature of time and the ‘processual’ nature of life, geology, and the cosmos. I examine key insights by Alfred North Whitehead, Henri Bergson, and other process thinkers, together with a range of historical and contemporary concepts and debates across evolutionary theory, ethology, and ecology.
Elemental Processes: In an Age of Ecological Crisis (work in progress)
This new project, including a monograph, examines the history of the life/matter distinction in philosophy and the sciences, and its enactment in recent examples of environmental destruction (wildfires, floods, coral bleaching, nuclear disasters, and oil spills).
Other ongoing writing projects include cross-disciplinary contributions to edited collections on ‘drawing processes of life’, on organicism in architecture, and on astrobiology.
-
Books (authored/edited/special issues)
Khandker, W. (2020) Process Metaphysics and Mutative Life: Sketches of Lived Time. Palgrave Macmillan.
Khandker, W. (2014) Philosophy, Animality and the Life Sciences. Edinburgh University Press.
Ambrose, D., Khandker, W. (2005) Diagrams of Sensation Deleuze and Aesthetics.
Khandker, W. (2004) Lives of the Real Bergsonian Perspectives.
-
Chapters in books
Khandker, W. (2024) 'The Organic Universe and Otherworldly Lives: Bergson and Sagan.' Astrophilosophy, Exotheology, and Cosmic Religion: Extraterrestrial Life in a Process Universe. Lexington Books,
Khandker, W. (2023) 'Mimicry, Adaptation, Expression.' Drawing Processes of Life: Molecules, Cells, Organisms. Intellect,
Khandker, W., Flanagan, T. (2023) 'On Ephemeral Structures.' Contemporary Perspectives on Architectural Organicism.
Khandker, W.J. (2016) 'Henri Bergson: Toward a Philosophy of Becoming.' The Sage Handbook of Process Organization Studies. Sage,
Khandker, W.J. (2015) 'Henri Bergson.' Oxford Bibliographies. Oxford University Press,
Khandker, W.J. (2014) 'Life as method: the invention of problems in Deleuze's Bergsonism.' In Ardoin, P., Mattison, L. (ed.) Understanding Deleuze, Understanding Modernism. Bloomsbury,
-
Journal articles
Khandker, W. (2013) 'The idea of will and organic evolution in Bergson's philosophy of life.' CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY REVIEW, 46(1) pp. 57-74.
Khandker, W. (2013) 'The idea of will and organic evolution in Bergson's philosophy of life.' Continental Philosophy Review, pp. 1-18.
Khandker, W.J. (2007) 'Two Natures: Whitehead on Bergsonism, Dualism, and Becoming-Subject.' Process Studies, 36(2) pp. 245-271.
Khandker, W. (2007) 'Two Natures.' Process Studies, 36(2) pp. 245-271.
Khandker, W.J. (2004) 'Bergson, Kant and the Evolution of Metaphysics.' Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy, 15
Khandker, W. (2004) 'The Challenge of Bergsonism, by Leonard Lawlor.' Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 35(3) pp. 320-322.
Khandker, W. (2003) 'Virtually New: Gilles Deleuze and Clare Parnet, Dialogues II.' Pli: The Warwick Journal of Philosophy,
-
Other
Khandker, W. (2020) (Guest blog) Visualizing scales of attention in the living world.
Khandker, W., Behrndt, S. (Forthcoming chapter) ‘Strange Constellations: Five observations on time, change and attention in Fevered Sleep'.
Khandker, W. (Forthcoming chapter) Synchronicities of the Living and the Non-Living.