Ontology

What do the things that scare us tell us about what it means to be human?

Why do some of us enjoy being scared by horror movies, and is it good for us? 

Why do movie audiences tend to complain more about watching childbirth scenes than about watching people being beheaded? 

What are the driving forces behind disgust and fear, and are they individual, social, cultural, universal, or a mixture of all of those?

My PhD is funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council’s DTP programme and is based at the universities of Southampton and Cardiff.

What is it about pregnancy and childbirth that freaks us out so much? Why are people more disgusted by birth scenes in movies than they are by people being beheaded? Why was Chumbawumba’s album banned from most shops in the UK when it depicts something entirely natural?

Might it all have something to do with being reminded of our mortality? Western existential philosophy has historically been obsessed with death as the thing that brings meaning to life, an argument which roughly goes:

- life is meaningful because it is finite;

- death is what makes life finite;

- therefore, death is what makes life meaningful.

However, finite things necessarily have two events that make them finite: an end, yes, but also a beginning.

Could it be, therefore, that birth is ontologically important in a similar way to death?

I’m looking at this in relation to Heidegger’s work in Division II of Being and Time, in particular Derrida’s interpretation of Heidegger’s understanding of the uncanny.

Speaking of the uncanny, I’m also looking at the philosophy of fear, and more specifically a phenomenology of horror, which is only partly an excuse to spend all my spare time watching horror movies and to expense my Shudder subscription.

I'm also really interested in aesthetic expression, the concept of 'frivolity' and why we tend to feel like some modes of aesthetic expression are more valid than others. 

I am also part of the AHRC’s DTP steering group of diversity and inclusion advocates. We meet online every few weeks to work out ways to make life easier for people who have historically been marginalised at a doctoral training level.

I qualify for this via lived experience in a few different ways:

- disabled

- Romani

- first-generation university-goer

- grew up poor

- grew up in a religious cult that discouraged university attendance

- child sex trafficking survivor

- LGBT+

For obvious reasons, I am also passionate about how most of us have various needs that intersect with, and sometimes clash with, each other.

Technically I suppose my Aboriginal Australian heritage would also count towards this, however given that I didn’t grow up on Country I don’t feel I can claim it. I am, however, more than happy to advocate for Aboriginal people to be included at doctoral level and am always keen to learn how to make PhD and post-doc spaces more inclusive in general, for everybody.