Projects per year
Personal profile
Biography
UNDINE SELLBACH
Undine is a philosopher, artist and Senior Lecturer at the University of Dundee. Her research brings together philosophy, ethology, psychoanalysis, feminism and performance to rethink the entanglements of a more-than-human world.
She has a PhD in Philosophy from the Australian National University called "Illustrated Nonsense" on the ethical and imaginative dimensions of Wittgenstein's thought. Since then she has taught Philosophy both inside and outside the discipline, including working with students in Art, Architecture and Performance, the Humanities and the Medical and Life Sciences. She is co-editor of The Edinburgh Companion to Animal Studies (2018) and is currently completing a book on the speculative ethologies of the biologist Jakob von Uexküll.
Alongside her academic writing, she makes philosophy performance works and is the author of the children’s book The Floating Islands (2006). Her creative work has been presented at international festivals and events such as The Edinburgh International Book Festival (2007); The Peacock Theatre & Kelly's Garden (2012); Theatre, Performance, Philosophy (Sorbonne, 2014); The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (2015) and Liquid Architecture's Why Listen to Animals? (2016) and is documented at undinefrancescasellbach.blogspot.com.
Teaching
Undergraduate Modules
Philosophy, Science, Imagination
Feminist Philosophies & Queer Theories
Introduction to Aesthetics
Plato and the Good Life
Introduction to Scientific Methods and Creativity
Human Futures
Postgraduate Modules
New Realisms and Materialisms
Philosophies of Imagination
Scottish Graduate School of Arts and Humanities
Summer School - Environmental Humanities Workshop
Research Areas
Undine's current major research interests are:
- Performance Philosophy
- Philosophy of Science
- New Materialisms
- Environmental Humanities and Posthumanities
- Animal Studies
- Feminist Philosophy
She would welcome PhD proposals in these areas.
She is a member of the Scottish Centre for Continental Philosophy.
AHRC funded studentships are available in these research areas.
Selected Publications
Speculative Ethologies: Philosophical Strolls through A Picture Book of Invisible Worlds, with S. Loo, Palgrave/Springer [forthcoming 2019].
The Edinburgh Companion to Critical Animal Studies, with L Turner, R Broglio, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2018.
“Performance.” The Edinburgh Companion to Animal Studies, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2018.
“Introducing the Edinburgh Companion to Animal Studies” with L Turner, and R Broglio, The Edinburgh Companion to Animal Studies, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2018.
“The Blind and Deaf Highway Woman” with S. Loo, The Creative Critic: Writing as/about Practice. Edited by Emily Orley and Katja Hilevarra, Taylor and Francis, London, 2018.
“Mistress O & the Bees: A Whirlwind of Insects Inside the Body of a Girl,” with S. Loo, Poetic Biopolitics: Political and Ethical Practices in the Arts and Humanities. Edited by P. Rawes, S. Loo and T. Matthews, I.B. Tauris, 2016.
“Insect Affects: the big and the small of the entomological imagination in childhood,” with S. Loo, Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, special issue: “Affective Ontologies. Post-human Perspectives on Affect.” Edited by Gerda Roelvink and Magdalena Zolkos. 20:3: 2015, 79-88.
“Insects and other Minute Perceptions in the Baroque House,” with S. Loo, Deleuze and the Non-human. Edited by H. Stark and J. Roffe, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
“The technics of Uexküll’s picture book laboratory,” with S. Loo, in Being Human: Between Animals and Technology. Edited by R. Broglio and F. Young. Taylor and Francis, 2015.
“A Picture Book of Invisible Worlds: Semblances of Insects and Humans in Jakob von Uexküll’s Laboratory,” with S. Loo, Angelaki: Journal of Theoretical Humanities, special issue “we have never been human, from techne to animality.” Edited by R. Broglio and F. Young. 18:1: 2013, 45-64.
“Eating (with) Insects: Insect Gastronomies and Upside Down Ethics,” with S. Loo, Parallax, special issue “Bon Appétit.” Edited by L. Turner and L. Kelley, 19:1: 2013, 12-28.
“The Archipelago of Old Age and Childhood: Creaturely Life in the Floating Archipelago,” Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture, special issue “Animals, Literature and the Visual.” Edited by S. McHugh and R. McKay. Vol 24: Spring 2013, 68-74.
“The lives of animals: Wittgenstein, Coetzee and the extent of the Sympathetic Imagination,” Animal Others and the Human Imagination: Explorations of the non-human in Self-Understanding. Edited by A. Vallely and A. Gross, Columbia: Columbia University Press, 2012.
“The traumatic effort to understand in Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man.” Considering Animals: Contemporary Studies in Human-Animal Relations. Edited by E. Leane and Y. Watt, Sydney: Ashgate, 2011.
“Affordable Places” with R. Fay Making Sense of Place. Edited by F. Vanclay, M. Higgins and A. Blackshaw, Canberra: National Museum of Australia, 2008.
“Difference and Attunement: Wittgenstein’s Vision of Community.” Collected in Conference Proceedings of the Australasian Society for Continental Philosophy, 2002.
Selected Creative Works
The Blind and Deaf Highway Woman, with Stephen Loo, 2016. [Performance Philosophy work]
The Grasshopper Cabaret, with Stephen Loo, 2012-2015. [Performance Philosophy work]
Mistress O & The Bees, with Stephen Loo, 2010 - 2012. [Performance Philosophy work]
The Floating Islands. Written and designed by Undine Sellbach, with illustrations by Udo Sellbach and music by Undine Sellbach and Mikel Simic, Hobart: The Words Sound and Picture Company, 2006. [Children's book]
Expertise related to UN Sustainable Development Goals
In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. This person’s work contributes towards the following SDG(s):
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- 1 Similar Profiles
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ENERGY: A (Philosophy of) Practice
Lushetich, N. (Investigator), Rowland, C. (Investigator), Sellbach, U. (Investigator) & Smith, D. (Investigator)
1/10/23 → 30/09/27
Project: Research
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InGAME - Innovation for Games and Media Enterprise (Joint with Abertay University and St Andrews University)
Ballie, J. (Investigator), Beech, N. (Investigator), Harris, P. (Investigator), Head, A. (Investigator), Linsley, J. (Investigator), Livesey, J. (Investigator), Murray, C. (Investigator), Rowan, J. (Investigator), Sellbach, U. (Investigator), Smith, D. (Investigator), Taylor, A. (Investigator), Valentine, L. (Investigator), Vaughan, P. (Investigator), Ward, M. (Investigator) & Yeung, H. (Investigator)
1/10/18 → 31/03/24
Project: Research
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Eva Jablonka on Epigenetics and Resonance
Sellbach, U. (Artist), Aug 2024Research output: Non-textual form › Digital or Visual Products
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'Why should our bodies end with our skin?': intergenerational longings, dislocations and waiting in BXBY
Sellbach, U. & Chang, S. (Contributing member), 2024, Interspecies Performance. Cull Ó Maoilearca, L. & Fitzgerald -Allsopp, F. (eds.). Ceredigion: Performance Research BooksResearch output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter (peer-reviewed) › peer-review
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Prickly Pear Jam: a restorative that might turn
Sellbach, U. (Artist), 24 Mar 2023Research output: Non-textual form › Exhibition
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'Why should our bodies end with our skin?': Intergenerational longings, dislocations and waiting in BXBY (Exhibition Catalogue Essay)
Sellbach, U., May 2022Research output: Non-textual form › Exhibition catalogue
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The Blind & Deaf Highway Woman
Sellbach, U. (Performer), Loo, S., O'Reilly, K. (Performer) & Beloff, L. (Performer), 12 May 2021Research output: Non-textual form › Performance
Activities
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Philosophy Speaker Series
Sellbach, U. (Participant), Ruda, F. (Participant), Woodward, A. (Organiser), Smith, D. (Participant), Röck, T. (Organiser) & Keohane, O. (Participant)
1 Jun 2024Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Other event
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Interdependence
Sellbach, U. (Contributor), Lushetich, N. (Organiser), Lear, R. (Organiser), White, J. (Organiser) & Cajete, G. (Keynote/plenary speaker)
25 Sept 2024Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Participation in workshop, seminar, course
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Energetic A/r/tographies
Sellbach, U. (Contributor), Lushetich, N. (Organiser), Lear, R. (Organiser) & White, J. (Organiser)
26 Jun 2024Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Participation in workshop, seminar, course
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Contested & Erased Energy Knowledge
Smith, D. (Organiser), White, J. (Organiser), Sellbach, U. (Organiser), Lushetich, N. (Organiser) & Lear, R. (Organiser)
31 Oct 2024 → 2 Nov 2024Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Participation in workshop, seminar, course
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Seed Energies
Sellbach, U. (Participant), Lushetich, N. (Organiser), Lear, R. (Organiser), White, J. (Organiser), Marder, M. (Keynote/plenary speaker) & Skene, K. (Speaker)
30 Apr 2024Activity: Participating in or organising an event types › Participation in workshop, seminar, course