College: Trinity Hall 

Email: lvlk2@cam.ac.uk

Supervisor: Prof Martin Crowley

Research Topic: Michel Serres’s Philosophy of Limits. Passages between the Philosophy of Science and Social Theory

About

Lilian is currently working on a PhD project on Michel Serres at the French Department, and she is also associated to the research group “Critical thinking in the plural” the Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin. Prior to that, she studied Philosophy at the University of Vienna (BA, MA) and Drawing at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, and worked as a research assistant at the Philosophy Department in Vienna. Lilian has contributed to various theatre projects and group exhibitions, and has participated in an artist in residency program in Tamil Nadu, India, in 2018. Her research is interested in philosophy of nature and law, the history and philosophy of science, critical theory and aesthetics.

Research

Lilian's doctoral research focuses on the philosophy of limits in the work of Michel Serres. It asks question such as: how does Serres conceptualise limits, what are the main resources for that, what do they ’translate’ between, and how is this to be contextualised in French theory, critical theory and the philosophy of science? By looking at how Serres moves especially with limits oriented by his understanding of entropy and topology, her doctoral project investigates translations between philosophy of science and social theory, especially in the light of the philosophy of climate change and conceptions of a ’natural contractuality’.

Teaching

Critical Theory (Foucault, Tsing, Mbembe, Deleuze, Spivak, Boltanski/ Chiapello, De Castro, Woolf, de Beauvoir)

Publications

“Infrastructure, Translation and Metaphor. A Reflection on Infrastructure’s Epistemic Framework and Metaphorical Displacements with Michel Serres and Bruno Latour” (in Broken Relations: Infrastructure, Aesthetics, and Critique, edited by Sabeth Buchmann and Ilse Lafer, Sternberg Press, forthcoming October 2022)

Drawing From and With the Oceanic: Tania Kovats at Parafin, London, third text. Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Art and Culture, 25. January 2022. http://www.thirdtext.org/kroth-kovats-review

“The Topology of Difference: Deleuze’s Nietzsche in his Politics of Folded Spaces and Subjects” (in: Nietzsche and the Politics of Difference, De Gruyter, forthcoming 2022)

“The Ocean in the Court – Relating the Limits of Natural and Social Laws in Michel Serres” (forthcoming, 2022)

“Critique emerging from Marshes and Mushrooms. Parasitism and Desterilisation in Serres and Tsing”, in: Kaiak. A Philosophical Journey, 7 (2020): Parassitismi.

 “Reale Außen? Konfrontationen zwischen French Theory und postkolonialer Kritik im Spiegel einer dividuellen Teilhabe am Weltwerden” (Polylog Nr. 42 2019, book review)

“Art under the Lens of Political Theory: Oliver Marchart and the Aesthetics of Explicitly Political Art” (http://www.thirdtext.org/kroth-marchart?fbclid=IwAR2J8zZkrPJpB5H_afFXjjf2CNTBxVFi6JRA-s-iMgmPn5jKvxM5lJwUV30, book review)

“Wie viel Geheimnis muss sein? Geheimnis, Nichtwissen und ihre gesellschaftlichen Funktionen bei Georg Simmel” (“How Much Secret Does It Have to Be? Secret, Non-Knowledge, and Its Social Functions according to Simmel”) in: (Deutungs-)Macht des Öffentlichen. Conference Transcript, Vienna: danzig&unfried. (forthcoming, 2022)

“Den gegenwärtigen Moment nicht verpassen” (“Not to Miss the Present Moment”) – Interview with Jean-Luc Nancy, in: Engell/ Siegert (Hrsg.) Zeitschrift für Medien-und Kulturforschung. SCHWERPUNKT Inkarnieren (Heft 8/1 2017), Hamburg: Meiner Verlag.

Projects

“Translating Entropy” AHRC OOC DTP funded workshop (organised by Lilian Kroth and David Harrison, February 2022)

CRASSH research network “Remote Sensing. Ice, Instruments, Imagination” (organised by Lilian Kroth and Amelia Urry, co-organisers: Charlotte Connelly, Scott Polar Museum, and Dehlia Hannah, Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts), starting in October 2022

Presentations

“Relations between Inter-action and Intra-action. Serres and Feminist Philosophy of Science” at Rethinking Relations: Michel Serres and the Environmental Humanities (November 9-12 2022, TU Dresden)

“Serres’ strukturelle Vertragskritiken” (13th July 2022, Bonn, Kolloquium Andreas Gelhard)

“Serres’s Natural - Legal Limits and Alignments – Approaching the Contractual Dimension of Entropic Limits” at Serres and the Social (June 21-22 2022, Queen’s College, Cambridge)

“Michel Serres and Critique”  (June 8th 2022, Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin)

“Infrastructure, Translation and Metaphor. A Reflection on Infrastructure’s Epistemic Framework and Metaphorical Displacements with Michel Serres and Bruno Latour” at Broken Relations: Infrastructure, Aesthetics, and Critique (conference, May 20-21 2022, Vienna)

“Thinking ‘Limits’ and its ‘Translations’ with Michel Serres – A Critical Perspective on Limitarisms in Political Ecology” at Society for Social Studies of Science (4S, October 2021, Toronto)   

“Michel Serres and ’le propre’” at Why Private Property? – Conference ( Bordeaux, June 2021) 

“Drawing Theory” at Tactics and Practice Research Seminar (Cambridge, March and May 2021)

Response to Marta Segarra’s “Poststructuralism and Posthumanities” at Was wird der Poststrukturalismus gewesen sein? (University of Vienna, January 2021)

“The Ocean in the Court – Relating the Limits of Natural and Social Law” at SEP-FEP (Society for European Philosophy, November 2020)

“What Makes Art Political? Raging Against the De-and Over-Politicisation of Artistic Practices” at French Graduate Conference: ‘Rage Against the Machine’ (Cambridge, October 2020)

“Deleuze and the Other(s) – Deleuze’s Logic of Implication and Explication” at Deleuze Studies Conference (July 2019, London, Royal Holloway)

“Memory and future as folding – a topological approach between Deleuze and Foucault” at Memories of the Future International Conference (Institute of Modern Languages Research School of Advanced Study, University of London, March 2019)

“Topology of Difference with Nietzsche and Deleuze” at Nietzsche and the Politics of Difference, Friedrich Nietzsche Society Conference (Newcastle University, UK, September, 2018) 

“Krise der Authentizität – zwischen Kapitalismuskritik und Ökonomisierung. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Boltanski/Chiapello und Bernard Stiegler” at Kritiken der Krise (June, 2018, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, Germany)