About
Who Am I?
Mark Paterson, Professor of Sociology at the University of
Pittsburgh. Previously I was Lecturer (equivalent to
Assistant Professor) in Human Geography at the University
of Exeter (2007-2011) in the UK, and before that Lecturer
(Assistant Professor) in Philosophy and Cultural Studies
at the University of the West of England, Bristol
(2003-2006).
What are my research interests?
The history and science of bodily sensation, and
technologies of the senses. I am author of books including The Senses of
Touch: Haptics, Affects and Technologies (Routledge,
2007), Seeing with the Hands: Blindness, Vision and
Touch After Descartes (Edinburgh UP, 2016), and How
We Became Sensorimotor: Movement, Measurement, Sensation
(University of Minnesota Press, 2021). I am co-editor of Touching
Space, Placing Touch (with Martin Dodge, Routledge,
2012) and a special issue of ACM Transactions in
Human-Robot Interaction (2023) with Guy Hoffman and
Caroline Yan Zheng, 'Designing the Robot Body: Critical
Perspectives on Affective Embodied Interaction'. I am on
the Editorial Board of the journals The Senses and
Society (since 2008), Emotion, Space and Society
( 2014-2024), and Multimodality & Society
(since 2021). My current research is concerned with the
role of embodiment in the histories of human-robot
interactions.
My Faculty page at University of Pittsburgh, and author profile on Amazon. If you want to see my journal articles and book chapters, see profiles on academia.edu | OrchidID | Google Scholar | Mendeley.
What are some career highlights?
- 2005-6: Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Research Leave, writing my first monograph The Senses of Touch (2007) in Sydney, Australia.
- 2008-2011: GWR Fellowship award to look at human-robot interactions with OC Robotics, Bristol.
- 2010-2011: EPSRC-AHRC Science and Heritage Networking Grant (Co-I) ‘Touching the Untouchable’, on haptic modeling of prehistoric textiles.
- 2016: Seeing With the Hands: Blindness, Vision and Touch After Descartes published with Edinburgh University Press.
- 2017-18: University of Pittsburgh Humanities Center Fellowship to work on book project, Movement, Measurement, Sensation [more here]
- 2018: Invited to curate a day of the conference-festival (Studium Generale) at Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, hosted by Stedelijk Museum.
- 2018: Elected Vice-President of Thematic Group 07: ‘Senses and Society’, International Sociological Association (ISA)
- 2018: Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS) ‘Vanguard Fellow’, University of Birmingham, working with ‘Embodied Geographies’ research group.
- 2020: Tenured at University of Pittsburgh, promoted to Associate Professor.
- 2022: Research Fellow, Institute of Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) – School of Social and Political Science (SSPS), at University of Edinburgh, UK for a project on human-robot interaction
- 2023: Promoted to Full Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Pittsburgh; elected President of International Sociological Association (ISA) TG07 ‘The Senses and Society’
- 2024: Benjamin Meaker Distinguished Visiting Professor, University of Bristol, UK. June 21-July 31, working with the ‘Senses and Sensations Research Group‘ on the project ‘‘More-than-human senses and sensations’
- 2025: Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Curiosity Award. ‘Sensory Studies for a More-than-human World’(APP65357), Co-I, with PI Andy Flack (University of Bristol, UK) and Co-I Nathan Morehouse (University of Cincinnati). £100,000.