Dr Melinda Cooper

Current Research

Between June 2011 and June 2015, I will be undertaking a Future Fellowship funded by the Australian Research Council. The title of the project is ‘Experimental Workers of the World – The Labour of Human Research Subjects in the Emerging Bioeconomies of China and India.’

Academic Qualifications

• 2001 Doctorate University of Paris VIII Thesis – ‘Nouvelle alliance, nouvelle naissance: la question de la genèse dans la pensée de Deleuze et Guattari’, supervisors Françoise Duroux and Hélène Cixous
• 1994 DEA (Diplôme d’Études Approfondies), University of Paris VIII
• 1992 BA (Honours), First Class Honours and University Medal, University of Sydney

Editorial Duties

Coeditor, with Michael Pryke, Tony Bennett and Liz McFall, Journal of Cultural Economy

Publications

Monograph
1) Melinda Cooper, Life as Surplus: Biotechnology and Capitalism in the Neoliberal Era, In Vivo series of Washington University Press, 2008. ISBN-10: 029598791X, ISBN-13: 978-0295987910

Reviewed in Biosocieties, Theory & Event, Science as Culture, Social Studies of Science, Radical Philosophy, Metamute, Geoforum, Journal of Cultural Economy

2) Melinda Cooper and Catherine Waldby, Clinical Labour: Human Research Subjects and Tissue Donors in The Global Bioeconomy, Duke University Press, 2013.

Refereed Articles
1) Melinda Cooper ‘Workfare, Familyfare, Godfare: Transforming Contingency into Necessity’ South Atlantic Quarterly 111(4), Special Issue ‘Labor’s Contingency: New Spaces and Times of Work’ edited by Melinda Cooper and T. E. Woronov, 2012

2) Melinda Cooper ‘Why I Am Not a Postsecularist’ Boundary II, 40(1), 2013.

3) Melinda Cooper 'The Strategy of Default – Liquid Foundations in the House of Finance' Polygraph: An International Journal of Culture and Politics 24 (Issue on Resistance to Finance), 2012.

4) Melinda Cooper ‘The Pharmacology of Distributed Experiment: User-Generated Drug Innovation’ Body and Society, 2012.

5) Melinda Cooper 'Complexity Theory after the Financial Crisis: The End of Neoliberalism or the Triumph of Hayek?' Journal of Cultural Economy 4(4), 2011, 371-385

6) Melinda Cooper ‘Experimental Republic – Medical Accidents (Productive and Unproductive) in Post-Socialist China’ EASTS (East Asian Science, Technology and Society – An International Journal), 5(3), 2011, 313-327, Special Issue on Biopolitics in China

7) Melinda Cooper ‘Trial by Accident: Tort Law, Industrial Risks and the History of Medical Experiment’ Journal of Cultural Economy 4(1), 2011, Special Issue on Transnational Medical Research.

8) Melinda Cooper and Jeremy Walker ‘Genealogies of Resilience: From Systems Ecology to the Political Economy of Crisis Adaptation’ Security Dialogue, 41(2), April 2011, Special Issue on Global Governance of Security and Finance.

9) Melinda Cooper, ‘Turbulent Worlds: Between Financial and Environmental Crisis’ Theory, Culture and Society, 27(2-3), 2010, 167-190, Special issue on Global Heating.

10) Melinda Cooper and Angela Mitropoulos, ‘The Household Frontier’ Ephemera: Theory and Politics in Organization, 9(4), 2009, 363-368, Roundtable on the Global Financial Crisis. Downloadable at http://www.ephemeraweb.org/journal/9-4/9-4coopermitropoulos.pdf

11) Melinda Cooper and Catherine Waldby, ‘From Reproductive Work to Regenerative Labour: The Female Body and the Stem Cell Industries’ Feminist Theory, 11(1), 2009.

12) Melinda Cooper, ‘Regenerative Pathologies – Stem Cells, Teratomas and Theories of Cancer’ Medicine Studies, 1(1), 2009, 55-66.

13) Melinda Cooper, ‘Orientalism in the Mirror – The Sexual Politics of Anti-Westernism’ Theory, Culture and Society, 25(6), 2008, 25-47.

14) Melinda Cooper, ‘Experimental Labour-Offshoring Clinical Trials to China’ EASTS East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal, 2(1), March 2008, 73-92.

15) Melinda Cooper and Catherine Waldby, ‘The Biopolitics of Reproduction: Post-Fordist Biotechnology and Women’s Clinical Labour,’ co-authored with Catherine Waldby, Australian Feminist Studies, 23(55), 2008.

16) Melinda Cooper, ‘Life, Autopoiesis, Debt – Inventing the Bioeconomy’ Distinktion – Journal of Scandinavian Social Theory, May 2007, 25-43, Special Issue on Bioeconomics

17) Melinda Cooper, ‘Stem Cell Science in India: Emerging Economies and the Politics of Globalization’, co-authored with Brian Salter, Amanda Dickins, Valentina Cardo Regenerative Medicine, 2(1), January 2007, 75-89.

18) Melinda Cooper, ‘The Unborn Born Again: Neo-Imperialism, the Evangelical Right and the Culture of Life,’ Postmodern Culture (PMC), 17(1), Fall, 2006.

19) Melinda Cooper, ‘China and the Global Stem Cell Bioeconomy: An Emerging Political Strategy?’ Regenerative Medicine, co-authored with Professor Brian Salter and Amanda Dickins, 1(5), 2006, 671-683.

20) Melinda Cooper, ‘Preempting Emergence – The Biological Turn of the War on Terror’, Theory, Culture and Society, 23(4), July 2006, 113-135.

21) Melinda Cooper, ‘Resuscitations: Stem Cells and the Crisis of Old Age,’ Body and Society, 12(1), January 2006, 1-23.

22) Melinda Cooper, ‘Regenerative Medicine: Stem Cells and the Science of Monstrosity’, Medical Humanities, 30 (1), June 2004, 12-22.

23) Melinda Cooper, ‘On the Brink: From Mutual Deterrence to Uncontrollable War,’ Contretemps: An Online Journal of Philosophy, Issue 4, September 2004, 2-18.

24) Melinda Cooper, ‘Insecure Times, Tough Decisions: The Nomos of Neo-Liberalism’, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 29(4), December 2004, 515-534.

25) Melinda Cooper, ‘Rediscovering the Immortal Hydra: Stem Cells and the Question of Epigenesis’, Configurations: A Journal of Literature, Science and Technology, December 2003, 1-26.

26) Melinda Cooper, ‘The Living and the Dead: Variations on De Anima’, Angelaki – Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, 7(3), December 2002, 81-104.

27) Melinda Cooper, ‘Vitesses de l’image, puissances de la pensée: la philosophie épicurienne revue par Deleuze et Guattari’, French Studies: A Quarterly Review (Oxford), LVI(1), January 2002, 45-60.

28) Melinda Cooper, ‘Transgenic Life: Controlling Mutation’, Theory and Event, Volume 5(3), August 2001.

29) Melinda Cooper, ‘Le lieu de l’homme: la topologie de la différence sexuelle chez Jacques Lacan’, Australian Journal of French Studies, XXXIV(1), 1997.

Book Chapters
30) Melinda Cooper ‘La crisis financiera de Heidegger. Acontecimiento, decisión y emergencia en el Heidegger tard'o’ in Politica y Acontecimiento ed Miguel Vatter and Miguel Ruiz Still, Fondo de Cultura Economica, Argentina, 2011. 195-224.

31) Melinda Cooper ‘1979 – Foucault, Neoliberalism and the Iranian Revolution’ in The Government of Life: Michel Foucault and Neoliberalism, ed. Vanessa Lemm and Miguel Vatter, Fordham University Press, 2012.

32) Melinda Cooper 'Pharmakologie im Zeitalter des verteilten Experiments' in Dimensionen der Bioökonomie. Objekte, Praxen, Strukturen, ed. Susanne Lettow, Transcript-Verlag, Bielefeld, 2012.

33) Melinda Cooper ‘Marx beyond Marx, Marx before Marx: Negri’s Lucretian Critique of the Hegelian Marx,’ in Reading Negri, ed. Pierre Lamarche, David Sherman, Max Rosenkrantz, Open Court Press, 2010, 127-147. ISBN 978-0-8126-9655-4

34) Melinda Cooper ‘The Silent Scream: Agamben, Deleuze and the Politics of the Unborn’ in Deleuze and Law: Forensic Futures, ed. Claire Colebrook, Patrick Hanafin and Rosi Braidotti, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, 142-62. ISBN-10: 0230210171

35) Melinda Cooper ‘Tissue Culture Art – Relics, Living Dolls and Meat’ in Art in the Biotech Era, Experimental Art Foundation Press, 2008, ed. Melentie Pandilovski. ISBN 0-949836-52-4

36) Melinda Cooper ‘Monstrous Progeny: The Teratological Tradition in Science and Literature,’ in Frankenstein’s Science, The Knowledge Traditions of Romantic Culture, 1780-1830, eds. Jane Goodall and Christa Knellwolf, Ashgate Press, 2007, 87-98. ISBN-10: 0754654478


Coordination of Journal Special Issue
Labor's Contingencies: New Spaces and Times of Work, special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly (SAQ), edited by Melinda Cooper and T. E. Woronov, forthcoming 2012

Special Biopolitics issue of refereed electronic journal Culture Machine, edited and prefaced by myself, Andrew Goffey (Middlesex University, UK) and Anna Munster (University of New South Wales), 2005.


Recent and Upcoming Presentations
2012 Economies of Reproduction: Historical and Anthropological Analyses of a Relational Structure, 1750-2010, invited conference paper, University of Bielefeld, June 13-16

2012 Clinical Labour, Workshop with Catherine Waldby, Kaushik Sunder Rajan, Jill Fisher, Dick Bryan, Brett Neilson, Elizabeth Hill, Terry Woronov, University of Sydney, May 21-22

2012 Life (Un)Limited, invited conference paper, Center for the Study of Women, UCLA, May 9-12

2012 Boundary II Journal Annual Conference, invited speaker, UCLA, May 13-14

2011 ‘Revolutionary Messianism and the Promise of Peoplehood’ invited presentation at Australian Institute for Social Inclusion and Well-being, University of Newcastle, Australia, 13 September 2011

2011 ‘Contingent Bodies, Experimental Labour’, presentation in Biopolitics of Science seminar series, University of Sydney, July 28, 2011

2011 ‘Revolutionary Messianism and the Promise of Peoplehood’ paper presented as part of the collective panel ‘There is Hope, but Not for Us: Marxism and Messianism’ at APSA (American Political Science Association), with Miguel Vatter, Wendy Brown, Bruno Bosteels, Cornell West, September 1-4, 2011.

2011 ‘Capital, Genealogy, Reproduction’ seminar presentation in World of Capital: Conditions, Meanings, Situations series, organized by Stathis Gourgouris, Department of Comparative Literature, Columbia University, April 28-29

2011 ‘Surplus Value, Surplus Life’ panel presentation organized by Neferti Tadiar at MLA conference, Los Angeles, 4-9 January

2010 ‘Biopolitics/Bioeconomics’, one week presentation of my work at BioPolitica Research Centre, Instituto de Humanidades, Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago de Chile Universidad Diego Portales, Chile, 10-18 June

2010 ‘Turbulent Worlds: Between Financial and Ecological Crisis’, Finance in Question/Finance in Crisis, 12-14 April, University of Manchester

2009 ‘Experimental Labour: Multinational, Multisite Clinical Trials in China’, Panel II on East-Asian Biopolitics (with Professors Susan Greenhalgh, Mei Zhan, Catherine Waldby), 4S (Society for Social Studies of Science) Annual Conference, Washington DC, October-November 2009

2009 ‘Introduction to Adele Clarke’, introductory paper to Professor Adele Clarke ‘From the Rise of Medicine to Biomedicalization: US Healthscapes 1890-Present’, Centre for Values, Ethics and the Law in Medicine (VELIM), University Of Sydney, July 27

2009 ‘The Household Frontier’ with Angela Mitropoulos, A Crisis Like No Other? What’s Different About this Financial Crisis? Symposium organized by the Australian Working Group in Financialization (AWFG), University Of Sydney, July 27.

2009 ‘The Green New Deal,’ paper presented, Institute for Advanced Studies, Quadrant Programme (Environmental Studies Programme), University Of Minnesota, 12-19 April.

2008 ‘On Viral Sovereignty – The Indonesian Response to Avian Influenza’, The Politics of Life and Innovation Workshop, University Of New South Wales, Department of Philosophy, December.

2008 ‘On Globalizing Clinical Trials’, ‘Climate Change: Precipitation and Event’ The Center For Place, Culture And Politics, Cuny Graduate Center, Invited Speaker, March 2008.