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thoke43

Thomas Keating

Assistant Professor

My research engages with technologies, speculative thinking, and nuclear memory communication. Currently, I am researching the social and technological problem of managing nuclear waste into the distant future.

Research

I hold a PhD in Human Geography from the University of Bristol (UK). Previously I held a lecturer position in Geography at UNSW Canberra's School of Science in Australia. I have also held teaching positions at Swansea University (UK), the European School Brussels (Belgium), and the University of Bristol. As a researcher at Linköping University, my work spans three main areas:

Nuclear Futures

Principally, my current research engages with the management of highly radioactive nuclear waste sites over distant future time horizons (circa 100,000 years). This includes questions around how information about nuclear waste burial sites can be communicated to future generations, to how relations of accountability for stewarding 'final' repositories for nuclear waste will work in practice between human and non-human things, to how political groups can best provide oversight with the technologies and social practices being put into place to safeguard nuclear repositories into the future.

Speculative Thinking

My research also advances forms of speculative thinking via recent innovations in continental philosophy (Stengers, Debaise, Deleuze, Latour etc.) with geographical research attempting to expand what counts as the empirical field (non-representational theory, new materialism, affect, post-humanism etc.). I am especially concerned with how speculative thinking forms an approach to experimenting with the production of abstractions. Against convention, therefore, speculative thinking would not be a call to think more ‘abstractly’ but would be an open question of how write about alternative forms of future experience that exceed present-day conventions of the phenomenological subject.

Technologies

Advancing debates in human geography, my research also develops an ontogenetic reading of technology following the philosophy of Gilbert Simondon. Key here is the sense that the concept technology is something defined less as a component of human being, and much more as set of nonhuman concretising processes defined by specific technological logics that are irreducible to organic evolution. One implication of an ontogenetic reading of technology is to redefine unconscious relations of thought in terms of material infrastructures and agencies in excess of the human body.

Research

I am principal investigator on two research projects:

  • “Managing Eternity? A study of accountability in the deep time management of Final Repositories for Nuclear Waste”, in collaboration with co-investigator Professor Steve Woolgar. This project focuses on examining how experts in Sweden and Finland are practically managing nuclear waste (spent fuel) repositories, particularly in the context of transferring accountability through time.

    Swedish Research Council Research Project Grant (2025 to 2028)

  • “Nuclear Diplomacy? Strengthening Civil Society Involvement with Final Repositories for Nuclear Waste”. In collaboration with co-investigator Professor Anna Storm, this project investigates the capacity of civil society groups to inform and oversee expert planning for spent fuel repositories in Sweden, which are designed to endure for 100,000 years.

    Mistra Research Project Grant (2025 to 2027)

Publications

2025

Thomas P. Keating, Anna Storm (2025)
Thomas P. Keating, Anna Storm (2025)

2024

Thomas P. Keating (2024) Geografier, Vol. 8, p. 24-26 (Article in journal)
Thomas P. Keating, Anna Storm (2024)
Thomas P. Keating (2024) Progress in Human Geography, Vol. 48, p. 49-65 (Article in journal)
Thomas P. Keating (2024) More-Than-Human Aesthetics: Venturing Beyond the Bifurcation of Nature, p. 42-56 (Chapter in book)

2023

Thomas P. Keating, Anna Storm (2023) Progress in Environmental Geography, Vol. 2, p. 97-117 (Article in journal)
Joe Gerlach, Didier Debaise, Aline Wiame, Tom Roberts, Andrew Lapworth, J. D Dewsbury, Claire Colebrook, Nina Williams, Thomas P. Keating (2023) Subjectivity, Vol. 30, p. 91-106 (Article in journal)
Joe Gerlach, Didier Debaise, Aline Wiame, Tom Roberts, Andrew Lapworth, J. D. Dewsbury, Claire Colebrook, Nina Williams, Thomas P. Keating (2023) Subjectivity, Vol. 30, p. 112- (Article in journal)
Thomas P. Keating (2023) Social & Cultural Geography, Vol. 24, p. 1481-1500 (Article in journal)

2022

Nina Williams, Thomas P. Keating (Editorship) (2022)
Thomas P. Keating (2022) Speculative geographies: ethics, technologies, aesthetics, p. 173-186 (Chapter in book)
Nina Williams, Thomas P. Keating (2022) Speculative geographies: ethics, technologies, aesthetics, p. 1-32 (Chapter in book)
Thomas P. Keating, Nina Williams (2022) Subjectivity, Vol. 15, p. 93-108 (Article in journal)

2021

Thomas P. Keating, Anna Storm (2021) Safety of Nuclear Waste Disposal, Vol. 1, p. 197-198 (Article in journal)
Thomas P. Keating (2021) Baltic Worlds, Vol. 14, p. 18-21 (Article in journal)
Didier Debaise, Thomas P. Keating (2021) Theory, Culture and Society. Explorations in Critical Social Science, Vol. 38, p. 309-323 (Article in journal)

2019

Thomas P. Keating (2019) Cultural Geographies, Vol. 26, p. 211-226 (Article in journal)
Nina Williams, Merle Patchett, Andrew Lapworth, Tom Roberts, Thomas P. Keating (2019) Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Vol. 44, p. 637-643 (Article in journal)
Thomas P. Keating (2019) Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Vol. 44, p. 654-656 (Article in journal)

Publications not in DiVA

For a list of publications please see my and .

  • . T Keating. Baltic Worlds, 18-21

Education

News

Organisation