Dr Zoë Sofoulis
In her early work Zoë Sofoulis (writing mostly as Zoë Sofia) employed psychoanalysis, semiotics and philosophy of technology to develop critical analyses of “science fiction culture,” where the “high” of “high tech” was interpreted as “extraterrestrial,” and quests of discovery, enlightenment and creation of artificial life were understood in relation to techno-masculine birth fantasies. This interest turned to cyberculture topics, including gendered computer learning styles, cyberfeminism, and women electronic artists. She brought sociotechnical and actor-network theory together with phenomenology of technology and theories of the pre-verbal mind to consider the interactive installation as an “artwork-network” that required a new interpretive vocabulary.
Her 2000 paper “Container Technologies” outlined an approach to a feminist philosophy of technology starting with tools and practices associated with women’s bodies and traditional labours, and ending with the spectre of a fully re-sourced world. This became the centrepiece of Containment: Technologies of Holding, Filtering, Leaking, an open access collection (Angerer et al., 2024 https://meson.press/books/containment) that includes ICS alumni and international authors.
At the ICS she has applied cultural research in fields where technocratic, engineering and behaviourist psychology approaches predominate, especially urban water management. Her partnership projects and papers have helped define a cultural and sociotechnical perspective that has been further developed through a National Water Commission Fellowship (2010-11), and symposia, workshops and conferences on water she helped organise, including with social scientists in the TWENTY65 water research consortium (2016-2020, Sheffield and Manchester).
Her first academic publication (Sofia 1984), an illustrated analysis of the film 2001: A Space Odyssey that asked how the political right of the Reagan years could be both vehemently anti-abortion and pro-nuclear armament (or pro-gun), has gained renewed relevance with the right’s resurgence (Pinkus 2021, Sofia 2022a, Sofia 2022b). Its related “analytic comics” exploring mythic and psychoanalytic aspects of high-tech iconography have recently been exhibited in Saint-Étienne (2021) and Geneva (2024).
Qualifications
- PhD, 1988, History of Consciousness, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA
- BA (Hons 1), 1979, Human Communication/Social Inquiry, Murdoch University, Western Australia
Research Focus
- Container theory
- Cultural and socio-technical aspects of urban water
- Knowledge ecologies in water management
- Myths of high-tech culture
- Limits of rationality
Awards and Recognition
- 2016-2021 Affiliate and visitor to the TWENTY65 water research consortium (EP/N010124/1) through universities of Sheffield and Manchester.
- 2017 (October) and 2018 (April-May): Hallsworth Visiting Professor in Geography at the University of Manchester.
- 2014-2015 UK travel and activities co-sponsored by Pennine Water Group through University of Sheffield.
- 2014 Travel Bursary (£1,000) from Institute for Advanced Studies, Durham University.
- 2010 -2011 National Water Commission Fellowship for the project Cross-Connections: Linking urban water managers with humanities, arts and social sciences researchers, at ICS.
- 2007 (October) - Visiting Scholar, School of Visual Arts, University of North Texas, Denton.
- 2007 (September) Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Visiting Researcher (Grant EP/F027915/1), Engineering, University College London and Lancaster University.
- 2006 VC’s Excellence Award – Postgraduate Supervision (with Neilson, Hodge, Noble, Ang)
- 2005 CAESS Community Engagement Award for Driving Cultures projects (with Greg Noble, Sarah Redshaw), $1,500
- 2001 (Spring) Marie-Jahoda Visiting Professorship at the Ruhr University Bochum, in Women’s Studies and Media Studies.
- 1988: Doctoral Thesis nominated for California award of University Microfilms International Humanities dissertation prize.
- 1980-81: West Australian recipient, Caltex Woman Graduate of the Year Scholarship.
- 1980: Fulbright Travel Grant for postgraduate studies.
Selected Publications
Dr Sofoulis publishes as both Sofia and Sofoulis.
Angerer, M-L, I Richardson, H Schmedes, and Z Sofoulis, Editors 2024. Containment: Technologies of Holding, Filtering, Leaking. Meson press: Lüneburg (220 pp.) Open access at https://meson.press/books/containment
Sofia Z, 2022. Exterminer les foetus: avortment, désarmement, sexo-sémiotique de l’extraterrestre. Translated from English by l4bouche. Editions l4bouche: Paris/ coedition with L’Exces, Romaineville. (175 pp.)
Fam, D, & Z Sofoulis 2017. A ‘knowledge ecologies’ analysis of co-designing water and sanitation services in Alaska, Science and Engineering Ethics, 23(4), 1059-1083.
Sofoulis, Z 2013. ‘Below the Double Bottom Line: The challenge of socially sustainable urban water strategies’ Australian Journal of Water Resources 17(2), 211-221.
Sofoulis, Z 2005. Big Water, Everyday Water: A Sociotechnical Perspective, Continuum: Journal of Media and Culture, 19(4), 445-463.
Sofoulis, Z 2003. Cyberquake: Haraway’s Manifesto, in Prefiguring Cyberculture: An Intellectual History, D Tofts, A Jonson, A Cavallaro, eds., Sydney/ Cambridge/London: Power Publications/ MIT Press, 84-103.
Sofia, Z 2000. Container Technologies, Hypatia 15(2),181-201.
Sofia, Z 1996. Contested Zones: Futurity and Technological Art, Leonardo: Journal of the International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology 29(1), 59-66.
Sofia, Z 1993. Whose Second Self? Gender and (Ir)rationality in Computer Culture, Geelong: Deakin University Press (149pp.).
Sofia, Z 1992, Hegemonic irrationalities and psychoanalytic cultural critique, Cultural Studies 6(3), 376-394.
Sofia, Z 1984. Exterminating Fetuses: Abortion, Disarmament, and the Sexo-Semiotics of Extraterrestrialism, Diacritics 14(2), 47-59.
Exhibitions
Sofia, Zoë, 2024, Selected drawings etched on aluminum as part of The Future is Unmanned exhibition, curated by Cindy Coutant at Liveinyourhead gallery, Geneva (Switzerland) 8 March – 13 April, 2024. https://www.hesge.ch/head/evenement/2024/exposition-liyh-future-unmanned
Coutant, C and E Benazet, 2021, Jupiter Space: l4bouche translates Zoë Sofia. Residency 20 September – 15 October 2021 and Exhibition from 15 October - 20 November 2021 at Les Limbes artspace, Saint-Étienne, France. https://cindycoutant.net/jupiter-space
Coutant, C and E Benazet, 2022, Jupiter Space, exposition, in Sofia 2022 Exterminer les foetus: avortment, désarmement, sexo-sémiotique de l’extraterrestre. Translated from English by l4bouche, Editions l4bouche: Paris/ coedition with L’Exces, Romaineville, pp.111-145. {Documentation of the exhibition.]
Conferences and Seminars
Lopes, Abby Mellick and Zoë Sofoulis. 2023. “Hybrid Water Cultures: implications for service relations with diverse water users in Sydney, Australia.” Refereed conference paper in Proceedings of the ServDes.2023 Entanglements & Flows Conference: Service Encounters and Meanings Proceedings, 11-14th July 2023, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Linkoping University Electronic Press Conference Proceedings, No. 203, Linkoping, Sweden, pp. 101-125. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3384/ecp203
Sofoulis, Zoë 2021, Pandemic Bubbles, Container Technologies Workshop, Brandenburg Centre for Media Studies, Potsdam (On-line), March 2021.
Sofoulis, Zoë 2021, The Hydro-politics of Trust: Changing forms of Trust in the Water Sector. Twenty65 Conference 2021, March 2021. (On-line)
Sharp, Liz, Jamie Linton and Zoë Sofoulis, 2021 Social knowledge in the new water paradigm: collaborative interpretive water research and its impacts. Keynote for Collaborative Interpretive Research on Water Network event, part of Twenty65 Conference 2021, March 2021 (On-line).
Fam, Dena, and Zoë Sofoulis with Ronlyn Duncan and Melissa Robson-Williams, 2020, On the road to Know-Where: situational awareness in transdisciplinary projects, Seminar for Institute for Culture and Society, 30 July 2020 (On-line).
Sofoulis, Zoë 2019, The Hydro-politics of Trust: Changing forms of Trust in the Water Sector (short version), Water Research Symposium, Research Week WSU, 24 October 2019.
Sofoulis, Zoë 2018, Big Mother Infrastructures:The (il)logics of invisible provision. Talk for ‘Post Cyberfeminism – Mutations in Australian Feminist Technoscience’ panel at 4S (Society for Social Studies of Science) conference, Sydney, 31 August 2018. [A reflection on how studies of women electronic and installation artists in 1990s influenced subsequent ‘container technology’ theory.]
Sofoulis, Zoë 2017, Social Innovation and drinking water practices: Disrupting the customer focus in a large water utility, The International Social Innovation Research Conference, Swinburne University, Hawthorn, 12 December 2017.
‘Misbehaviour, attitudinal problems and unpredictability: the challenges and limits of water customerisation’, 5 April 2017, presentation for TWENTY65 Conference (theme: Bringing the Water Sector Together), Innside Hotel, Manchester, 4-5 April 2017.
Invited Talks and Presentations
Sofoulis, Zoë 2021, Customerisation: The Overworked Metaphor of the Water Customer, Risk and Fragmentation in urban water knowledge, Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia workshop, University of Melbourne, 28-29 July 2021.
Sofoulis, Zoë 2018, Closing Keynote to TWENTY65 Conference 2018, Deansgate Hilton, Manchester, 18 April 2018.
Sofoulis, Zoë and Dena Fam, 2018. ‘Outline of Knowledge Ecology Framework’, part of Knowledge Ecologies Workshop, Institute for Sustainable Futures – UTS, 18 September 2018.
Sofoulis, Zoë 2018, ‘Digging the Infra: excursions into technosex, containment and knowledge ecologies’, 12 April 2018, at the Brandenburg Centre for Media Studies [Zentrum für Medienwissenschaften (ZeM)], University of Potsdam, on the occasion of the Director Prof. Marie-Luise Angerer’s 60th birthday.
Sofoulis, Zoë 2017, ‘Gender and Infrastructure: Feminism, philosophy, and the knowledge ecology of urban water’, 16 October 2017. Hallsworth Professorial Fellow Lecture, University of Manchester. (Also given on 11 October 2017 as Seminar for Dept of Urban Studies and Planning, Sheffield University.)
Sofoulis, Zoë 2015, The Household as Nexus, The Domestic Nexus: Workshop 1, Sheffield University, 15 October 2015. View at https://nexusathome.wordpress.com/2015/10/19/slides-from-zoe-sofoulis/ .
