Over the past months while I’ve been working on my sleep justice and design research project I’ve made some great connections with other academics doing interesting work in and adjacent to the field.
Prof Jonathan White. Jonathan is a political philosopher at London School of Economics. Reading his article in Aeon and its more scholarly version in the Journal of Political Philosophy sparked my original interest in sleep justice. Jonathan’s main research areas are in European politics and sleep is something of a side project for him.
Prof Lauren Hale. Lauren is a pioneer researcher in the sociological determinants of sleep. Based at Stony Brook University in NY she has written extensively on the connections between sleep and factors such as disadvantage, urban environment and life-stage.
Dr Sebastian Klinger. Sebastian is a literature fellow at Oxford University and the convenor of the Sleep and the Rhythms of Life research network. They’re investigating how sleep is represented in literature and the arts, a truly fascinating topic.
It’s very interesting to see how the field of sleep studies is becoming broader to include much more than medical and scientific approaches. And it’s a real privilege to be able to discuss ideas with such a range of smart and thoughtful people. It’s clear that recognition is growing that sleep is not just an individual, biological phenomenon, but social, culture, political and economic. As such, it “presents a vital opportunity for intervention from the humanities” (Heubener 2018, p. 67). And from design.