Adam Dodd

My field of expertise is communication, cultural and media studies. My work investigates how media, science, and culture intersect – especially in relation to the nonhuman, the environment, and the limits of human-centred ("anthropocentric") thinking.

Some of my major research interests include:

Science media & natural history media: how media represent nonhuman life forms (especially insects), and how those representations shape human understanding of the natural world.

Insect-human relations, history of entomology: exploring cultural, historical, and aesthetic dimensions of insects and how they are understood and "anthropomorphised" (i.e., portrayed with human qualities)

Anthropocentrism, anthropomorphism, the nonhuman and more-than-human: critiquing human-centred ways of seeing, exploring how elusive and unusual nonhuman actors and entities (such as very small animals and UFOs) are constructed in media and cultural histories.

Ignorance, UFOs, and scientific controversy: e.g. how UFOs are marginalized by scientific discourse, how ignorance is socially constructed, how media and public culture deal with phenomena at the margins of accepted science.

My published works include the book, Beetle (2016), which traces the natural and cultural history of beetles.

Overall, I combine cultural history, media studies, and environmental humanities to question how humans perceive, represent, and often privilege themselves relative to non-humans, drawing on historical, phenomenological, and philosophical tools.