Research
Research groups
Research interests
- Digital Geographies
- AI & Deep Learning
- Politics of Refusal
- Geographies of Negativity
- Negative affects
Current research
I am a cultural-digital geographer whose work examines digital technologies, negative affects, and the politics of refusal. More specifically, I examine how the politics of resistance shifts in relation to changing technological and urban conditions, and how, in turn, such negative politics push us to rethink geographical understandings of power, affect, and the human. My research, while grounded in cultural and digital geography, is inspired by critical theory and pessimist philosophies. Methodologically, my work draws on Creative and GeoHumanities methods, with a focus on film. I have recently co-directed MACHINES IN FLAMES (2022; 49min), an experimental documentary about a group of French computer workers who bombed computer firms in the early 1980s, and BREACHED (2024; 15min), a chronicle of modern-day cargo looting.
My current research investigates refusal in the face of the deepening saturation of Artificial Intelligences technologies into everyday life, what I refer to as 'AI-Pessimism'.
Most recent publications:
Dekeyser, T. & Lynch, C. (2024) Control and Resistance in Automated Shops: Retail Transparency, Deep Learning, and Digital Refusal. Antipode.
Dekeyser, T., Zhang, V. and Bissell, D. (2023) What should we do with bad feelings? Negative affects, impotential responses. Progress in Human Geography.
Dekeyser, T. (2023) Rethinking Posthumanist Subjectivity: Technology as Ontological Murder in European Colonialism. Theory, Culture & Society.