Heather McKnight

Twitter: @heat_mcknight

Heather McKnight is one of the co-founders of the Magnetic Ideals Collective which works on projects that use creative and artistic ways of bringing communities together to create social change. She is currently working on mapping anti-precarity movements across Europe. She uses diverse creative modes of engagement for development, training and research. She is an experienced trainer and researcher in students’ unions, colleges, universities, and the public sector, as well as an activist and artist. Coming from a working background in equalities, campaigning and education research, she has worked for charities, students’ unions and local government.

Heather completed her PhD in Law Studies at the University of Sussex Law Department entitled ‘Reimagining the University through Resistance’, which addressed joint working between trade unions and students’ unions and their approaches to academic freedom. She is a critical utopian scholar with research interests in unions, protest, education, feminism, gender, aesthetics, utopian analysis of science fiction television, and speculative fiction. She has fought to preserve the archives of the National Union of Students and has been involved in relocating them to the Modern Records Centre in Warwick where they will soon be available as a public interest archive.

Her teaching experience includes modules on Public Law and Order and Disorder (covering Law, Politics and Sociology) and MA seminars on critical theory at the University of Sussex, and the Self and Society Module on poststructuralism at the University of Brighton. She also has a background in student engagement and pedagogical research working in partnership projects between institutions and students’ unions and has delivered numerous research projects and developed training in these areas that have been delivered to students, and university staff from teaching staff and administrators to senior management.

She was the co-founder of the Critical Studies Journal at the University of Brighton, serving on the editorial board for three years and has also been the Co-Editor of Excursions Journal at the University of Sussex. She is a founding member of the anti-racist and trans-inclusive CHASE Feminist Network, which reaches across nine universities in the South East of England, aiming to create spaces of resistance in what continues to be a patriarchal higher education sector with ongoing and intersectional discrimination happening at all levels.

For a full work history please see Linkedin Profile Creative work Google Scholar

Video Essay – Education Utopia in the School Strike for Climate Crisis

Publications

[pending] Gender & Sexuality – Greta Tunberg, Springer Encyclopedia of Social Justice in Education (First Edition) 2022

[pending] Gender & Sexuality – Teachers’ Unions, Gender, and Sexualities, Springer Encyclopedia of Social Justice in Education (First Edition) 2022

The Interdependence of Academic Freedom and Protest, H McKnight, Council for the Defence of British Universities, Academic Freedom Blog Series, 2021

Digital Carekit: Developing Activist Communities of Care Online. Audrey Verma, Heather McKnight & Griselda Gabriele, 2021

Networks: Logged on, An Introduction, H McKnight, Excursions 10.2: Reflections (1) 10th Anniversary Edition, 2021

Chaos and Hope – Nano-Utopian Moments of Activist Self-Organisation, H McKnight, Excursions 10.1: Chaos, 2020

The Storm: Processing Contradictions, H McKnight, Excursions 10.1: Research in Times of Chaos, 2020

Invisible Roots of Knowledge Production and their Role in Resistance to the Marketisation of Education H McKnight, Excursions 9 (1), 118 – 140, 2020

“SAVE THE FUTURE” – Utopian Temporalities of the School Strikes for Climate Crisis, H McKnight, Renewal Journal 28 (3) Political Temporalities, 2020

The Oceans are Rising and So Are We’: exploring utopian discourses in the school strike for climate movement, H McKnight, Brief Encounters 4 (1) 2020

Imaginary Songs from the Feminist Future – Unlocking Creativity in Lockdown, H McKnight, Everyday Feminist Lockdown, CHASE Feminist Blog (4), 2020

The Sussex campus ‘Forever Strike’: estrangement, resistance and utopian temporality H McKnight, Studies in Arts and Humanities 5 (1), 145-172, 2019

The Utopian ‘not yet’ of pop-up unionism [weblog article, 20 March 2019] H McKnight, AltVisions, 2019

Lessons in unionising the future: the art of estrangement and critical pedagogy on the picket line H McKnight, Art/Law Network [weblog article, March 2018] 2018

Editor’s Preface: Excursions – Networks, H McKnight, N Farrukh Hameed, Excursions 8 (1), 1 – 8, 2018

Ernst Bloch’s Theories Concerning Religion H McKnight, Springer Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion (Third Edition) 2017

Agamben as and through Benjamin’s storyteller and translator H McKnight, Critical Studies 1, 28-39, 2015

Conference Papers
2022 – Fail Again, Fail Better? Utopia, Memory, Radical Politics, and Radical Research, Roundtable – Anticipatory Failure: Sustaining Hope as Collective Care in Digital Campaigning and Online Activist Spaces

2021 – Acting as If: Prefigurative Politics in Theory and Practice, Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague – Chaos and Hope –Nano-Utopian Moments of Activist Self-Organisation

2021 – Critical Legal Studies, Frakenlaw Conference, University of Dundee – Educating Utopia: The School Strike for Climate Crisis and their Legislative Visions

2021 – Activism and Resistance, The London Science Fiction Research Community – “I don’t see how singing and dancing could be dangerous” Becoming Utopian in Utopia Falls – Interrogating a Nano-Utopian Moment in Teen TV

2021 – Living in the End Times, Cappadocia University, Turkey (online) – Unpacking ReGenesis from a Pandemic Perspective: Horizons of Transnational Cooperation and Human Connection

2021 – Taking Care in the Climate Crisis (online), CHASE DTP-  Educating Utopia: Educating Utopia in the School Strike for Climate Crisis Movement – Video Essay

2020 The Conference at the End of the World, Alt-ac (online) – The Invisible Roots of Knowledge Production, and Their Role in Resistance to the Marketisation of Education

2020 Brief Encounters Journal Launch (online) – “The Oceans are Rising and So Are We” – Utopian Discourses of the School Student Strike for Climate Change

2019 London Science Fiction Network, Birkbeck, The Economies of Science Fiction Conference – The Commons of Consciousness: Labour, dispossession and enclosure in Falling Water and Sense8

2019 The Art of Not Doing Conference, Interdisciplinary conference on rest, resistance and pleasure activism – Forever Strike! Estrangement and Utopian Temporality on Sussex Campus

2019 Utopian Studies Society Conference, Prato Italy – “The Oceans are Rising and So Are We” – Utopian Discourses of the School Student Strike for Climate Change

2019 ‘Faking It’ Excursions Symposium, University of Sussex – The Invisible Roots of Knowledge Production, and their Role in Resistance to the Marketisation of Education

2019 Disruption, Transition and Transformation Symposium at LSE – Sussex Campus on Strike: Estrangement, Resistance and Utopian Temporality

2018 Academic Identities Conference – The Peaceful University: aspirations for academic futures – compassion, generosity, imagination, and creation, Hiroshima University Japan – Unionising Hope: Collective Subjectivities of Resistance in Higher Education

2018 The Social Life of Time Conference, University of Edinburgh – Exploring Unionised Potentiality: The 2018 Strike as a Site of Utopian Temporality

2018 Utopia Now, Chelsea College of Arts – Unions as Utopian Spaces: Narratives of Resistance in the Fight Against Marketised Education

2018 Critical Legal Conference, University of Warwick – Student Resistance Between and Beyond: How the Charitable Status of Students’ Unions is Relocating Student Activism, Paths in the Midst of Collapse: The Role of Academic Freedom in Resisting the Marketisation of Education

2017 University of Sussex, Art and Law Workshop, Dystopias of Motherhood and Fear: An Absence of Legal Interventions against Weaponised Reproduction in Television Sci-Fi

2017 Solidarity and Utopia Conference, Gdansk, Utopias of shared anticipatory
(pre)consciousness: Blurring the thresholds of self in Falling Water and Sense8

2017 Encounters, University of East Anglia – Theorising the ‘Not Yet’: The Value of Critical Utopian Theory in Interdisciplinary Research and Discourse Analysis

2017 Postgraduate Workshop, Sussex – Dystopias of Motherhood and Fear: An Absence of Legal Interventions against Weaponised Reproduction in Television Sci-Fi

2017 Bringing Life to Politics Conference, University of Brighton – Narrating the Boundaries of Being Human: Blurring the thresholds of of self in Sense8

2017 Politics of Temporality Postgraduate Workshop, Sussex – Exploring Unionised Potentiality: Heterotopian Sites of Resistance and Utopian Temporality in Higher Education

2017 Politics of Temporality ‘Time and Fear’ Workshop, Sussex – A Heritage of New Terrorisms: The Chronotopology of Prevent Legislation in University Spaces

2017 Dystopia Now! Conference, Birkbeck – Dystopian Narratives of Motherhood and Reproduction in TV Science Fiction: Challenging the Patriarchy or Reinventing the Witch Hunt?

2016 Society for Utopian Studies, St. Petersburg, Florida Tracing the Edges of Contemporaneous Contradiction, Paths in the Midst of Collapse: Preventing Prevent

2016 Critical Studies Research Group Resistance Conference, University of Brighton: Unionising the Future? Potential resistance to marketisation of education between Trade Unions and Students’ Unions

2016 (16th June) Utopia Research Workshop – 500 Years of Utopia, University of Nottingham: Utopian Temporalities and Horizons of resistance between Trade Unions and Students’ Unions

2016 (17th June) Society for Women in Philosophy Conference Precarity: Passion, Rage, Reason, University of Brighton: “I am not your property; I am not your Weapon” – Weaponising Reproduction: Motherhood, pregnancy and cloning as forms of control in TV Sci-fi

2016 (12 – 13 May) International Institute for the Sociology of Law, Onati, Workshop on Radical Temporality: Law, Order and Resistance: Mapping Radical Utopian Temporalities of resistance between Trade Unions and Students’ Unions

2016 Buzzcuts Conference, University of Glasgow: Unionising the Future: Trade Unions, Students’ Unions and Resistance

2015 Society for Utopian Studies Conference, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Messianic Cooperisms and Fantastic Trees: Tracing the Utopian Horizons of Twin Peak & Mother, Martyr, Cyborg: Dystopian Dialectics of Feminine Power in Continuum

2015 Utopias CAPPE Conference, Brighton: Reclaiming the Night: Fatal Intersections in Concrete Spaces – An analysis of Reclaim the Night Marches through Foucault’s notion of Heterotopia concurrently with Bloch’s Utopian Function

2015 Utopian Studies Society Conference: Utopia and the End of the City: Daydreams of becoming Human: Conflicted Horizons of Identity & Reclaiming the Night: Fatal Intersections in Concrete Spaces

2015 Feminist Futures Conference, London: Reclaiming the Night: Fatal Intersections in Concrete Spaces – An analysis of Reclaim the Night Marches through Foucault’s notion of Heterotopia concurrently with Bloch’s Utopian Function

2015 Quality Assurance Agency Enhancement Themes Conference: Conflicting Roles? Student Representatives as the Storyteller and the Translator – Applying Benjamin in the student movement

2015 Vanishing Acts: Exploring Marginalised Television Identities, Newcastle University: Mother, Martyr, Cyborg: Dystopian Dialectics of Feminine Power in Continuum

2015 The Practice of (in)Visibility,University of Brighton: The Ideology of Community Organising: (in)visible (dis)courses of Power in the Student Movement

2015 Disorienting the Topological Conference, London: Reclaiming the Night: Fatal Intersections in Concrete Spaces – An analysis of Reclaim the Night Marches through Foucault’s notion of Heterotopia concurrently with Bloch’s Utopian Function

2014 Society for Utopian Studies Conference, Canada, Montreal: Towards Violent Utopias? Butler and Agamben as manifesting Bloch’s utopian function – Funded by the University of Brighton, School of Humanities

2014 Workers in Democracy and Representation Conference, Manchester: Measuring Without Numbers: A Story about Enhancement – Resituating Evaluative Structures in Students’ Unions through Bloch’s Theory of Deficits and Realisation, and Benjamin’s concepts of the Storyteller and Translator

2014 International Ontologies of Conflict Conference, University of Brighton: Towards Violent Utopias? Butler and Agamben in the ‘darkness of the lived moment’

2012 Workers in Democracy and Representation Conference, Leeds, Improving Voter Turnout and Participation

Creative Projects – Music, Video, Interdisciplinary

Full page here: https://www.magneticideals.org/home/people-2/heather-mcknight/creative-work/

Heather McKnight is a multidisciplinary academic, artist, activist, published writer and creative facilitator. Having from an early age engaged in acting and poetry that tackled issues of youth disempowerment through local projects, she has gone on to engage in a combination of politicised artistic and research projects which range from music to visual arts. She has been performing as musician (and working intermittently as a promoter) since 2005, this has included playing bass, double bass, guitar and singing in industrial projects, rock bands, folk bands, indie-rock, punk, noise and performance art projects and constructing live and recorded soundscapes for sound art projects. She is a published utopian theorist and uses expressive paintings to explore the utopian impulse, which she is now working to transform into works of kinetic video art. This has been part of her development into expressive video work from 2019. The video work has included live/curated film works for gigs, music videos, immersive works, depending on the project this involves filming as well as curating archive footage. She has been moving into working her academic papers into more accessible immersive video essays.

2022 – Present, The Swamp: Ritualising our Biodiversity as Somatic Practice

2019 – Present, Band (guitar, synth, songwriting, videos) Fuck You and Your A-Sides, Bandcamp, YouTube, Facebook, Lockdown Blog Post

2022 – Present, Video and Soundscape Subjects of Withdrawal

2014 – 2016, Band (bass, vocals, songwriting) Ottermatic

2012 – 2014, (double bass, vocals) Burnt Canvas

2010 – Present, (performance, curation, bass, double bass, vocals) RAAD with 2 As

2010 – Present, (bass, vocals, songwriting) Plastic Heart Attack

2005 – 2010, Dead on the Live Wire (bass, double bass, vocals, songwriting, beats) Review, Facebook, Soundcloud, ReverbNation

Steering Committees

2022 – Present, Secretary Arts for Life

2022 – Present, Director – LORE Arts School – Legal literacy
through arts and nature-based education, research and advocacy

2018 – Present, Founder and Blog Editor of CHASE Feminist Network
2018 – Present, Member of SLS Legal Education Research Group
2017 – 2018, Chair of CHASE Student Advisory Group
2016 – 2017, General Editor for Excursions Journal, University of Sussex
2016 – 2017, Postgraduate Research Representative for Law, University of Sussex
2016 – Present Member of Art and Law Research Network, University of Sussex
2016 – 2019, Member of Politics of Temporality Research Cluster, University of
Sussex
2015 – 2016, Member of Organising Committee for CSRG Resistance Conference,
University of Brighton 2016
2015 – Present, Founding Member of Magnetic Ideals Steering Committee
2015 – 2016, Volunteer at Oasis Project (working with children from families
affected by drug or alcohol abuse)
2014 – 2015, Organising Committee for the Practicing (in)Visibility Academic
Conference, University of Brighton
2014 – 2017, Founder and Editorial Board Member, Critical Studies Journal
2013 – 2014, Organising Committee for Ontologies of Conflict Academic
Conference, University of Brighton
2013 – 2017, Member of Critical Studies Research Group Steering Committee at
University of Brighton
2010 – 2011, Elected member of National Union of Students Women’s Committee
2007 – 2010, FTSC Promotions – events management/copywriter
2006 – 2008, Member of Scottish Cross Parliamentary Group on the Contemporary
Scottish Music Industry
2006 – 2008, Member of Student Footprints Steering Group, NUS Scotland
2005 – 2006, Charity Corporate Decathlon Council Organiser
2003 – 2004, Notion: Facilitator of Inclusive Cultural Art Workshops for
Teenagers