Augmenting the Body: Disability, Care and the Posthuman (360G-Wellcome-205336_Z_16_Z)

Body augmentation takes many forms, whether personal adaptation or the rehabilitation of those with disabilities, and ranges across the physical, cognitive, philosophical and technological. It also questions the constitution of norms and the status and viability of the body when considered in terms of its presence, boundaries and activities. Our aim is to develop a cross-disciplinary research approach to ideas of augmentation, noting how they reflect and are influenced by cultural narratives that drive contemporary obsessions with robots and a posthuman space ‘beyond’ conventional apprehensions of the body and selfhood. We will use a broad understanding of augmentation, including ideas of care and psychological wellbeing as well questions relating to technology and the cyborg/biohybrid body, and will focus on both physical and cognitive augmentation in exploring the interaction of the human and non-human. We will concentrate on disability because it raises central questions about difference, challenges assumptions about norms, and works both as a material concept located in the world of patients and rehabilitation, and a set of metaphors that reflect current thinking of what it means to be human. Ultimately, through co-produced research, our project seeks to change the ways in which disability experience is represented and understood.