Daniel M. Knight
Dr Daniel M. Knight is Reader in the Department of Social Anthropology and Director of the Centre for Cosmopolitan Studies at the University of St Andrews. He has held positions at the London School of Economics and Political Science and Durham University and collaborates closely with the British School at Athens.
Daniel is a philosophical, historical, and economic anthropologist who has written extensively on time/temporality and crisis, primarily in the context of Thessaly, Greece. His work combines theories toward a ‘philosophy of humanity’ with detailed ethnographic, archival, and popular culture analysis.
Daniel is a PI on a Humanities in the European Research Area - Collaboration of Humanities and Social Science in Europe (HERA-CHANSE) project on Times in Crisis, Times of Crisis: The Temporalities of Europe in Polycrisis (TiCToC) (1.5m euros, 2025-28). The project explores what it means to live in times of crisis, how crisis changes over time, and the merits of the popularized polycrisis trope. TiCToC includes partner institutions in Austria, Czechia, Denmark, Norway and Slovenia, as well as engaging with 6 non-academic partners in the realm of film, theatre, museum and archival work. Ten projects were awarded by HERA-CHANSE, with a success rate a little above 4%.
Daniel is PI on a Leverhulme Trust project Times of Polycrisis (£416,630, 2025-29) investigating the cost of living and energy crises in the UK, Greece, and Turkey. The project interrogates the notion of 'unprecedented times' through lenses of political rhetoric, social complexity, communication technology, and historical consciousness.
He is author/editor of six books. “History, Time, and Economic Crisis in Central Greece” (Palgrave, 2015) provides a theory of ‘cultural proximity’, exploring how moments of the past are intricately woven together and embodied during eras of social upheaval. “The Anthropology of the Future” (Cambridge University Press, 2019), presents the concept of ‘orientations’ as a way to study the indefinite teleologies of everyday life. The book was translated into Turkish “Gelecegin Antropolojisi” in 2024 (Ankara: FOL). "Vertiginous Life: An Anthropology of Time and the Unforeseen" (Berghahn, 2021) proposes a theory of temporal vertigo, or how people experience the existential affects of life in crisis. “Energy Talk: Green Knowledge from Greece's Silicon Plains” (Cornell University Press, 2025) puts forward the concept of ‘adelo-knowledge’, unpacking how new conglomerations of knowledge emerge around the renewable energy industry.
Stemming from a long-term interest in the philosopher of science, Michel Serres, Daniel is co-editor of "Porous Becomings: Anthropological Engagements with Michel Serres" (Duke University Press, 2024). He has also co-edited “Ethnographies of Austerity: Temporality, Crisis and Affect in Southern Europe” (Routledge, 2017) and has edited special collections on “Alternatives to Austerity”, “Orientations to the Future”, "Emptiness", "The Vertiginous: Temporalities and Affects of Social Vertigo" and "Polycrisis". He is co-editor of “History and Anthropology” journal, convenes the ASA's "Anthropology of Time Network" and is an Associate of the Higher Education Academy. His research has been funded by HERA-CHANSE, the ESRC, EPSRC, Leverhulme Trust, British Academy and National Bank of Greece.
Daniel has delivered keynote addresses to national bodies and associations, including the Israeli Anthropological Association, the Italian Society for Cultural Anthropology, the Danish Association of Anthropologists (MegaSeminar), to the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, at the 4EU+ Prague Spring School, and keynote interdisciplinary humanities lectures in Luxembourg and Manchester. In 2024 he took up a visiting fellow position at Johns Hopkins University in Comparative Thought and Literature, hosted by Profs Jane Bennett and William Connolly.
Research Interests / Supervision Topics:
Philosophical Anthropology, History and Anthropology, Economic Anthropology, Anthropology of the Future, Anthropology of Crisis, Time and Temporality, Renewable Energy and Sustainable Economic Development, Modern Greece, European (especially Balkan and Mediterranean) Anthropology, Michel Serres
Address: Department of Social Anthropology, University of St Andrews, 71 North Street, St Andrews, Fife, KY16 9AL, Scotland
Daniel is a philosophical, historical, and economic anthropologist who has written extensively on time/temporality and crisis, primarily in the context of Thessaly, Greece. His work combines theories toward a ‘philosophy of humanity’ with detailed ethnographic, archival, and popular culture analysis.
Daniel is a PI on a Humanities in the European Research Area - Collaboration of Humanities and Social Science in Europe (HERA-CHANSE) project on Times in Crisis, Times of Crisis: The Temporalities of Europe in Polycrisis (TiCToC) (1.5m euros, 2025-28). The project explores what it means to live in times of crisis, how crisis changes over time, and the merits of the popularized polycrisis trope. TiCToC includes partner institutions in Austria, Czechia, Denmark, Norway and Slovenia, as well as engaging with 6 non-academic partners in the realm of film, theatre, museum and archival work. Ten projects were awarded by HERA-CHANSE, with a success rate a little above 4%.
Daniel is PI on a Leverhulme Trust project Times of Polycrisis (£416,630, 2025-29) investigating the cost of living and energy crises in the UK, Greece, and Turkey. The project interrogates the notion of 'unprecedented times' through lenses of political rhetoric, social complexity, communication technology, and historical consciousness.
He is author/editor of six books. “History, Time, and Economic Crisis in Central Greece” (Palgrave, 2015) provides a theory of ‘cultural proximity’, exploring how moments of the past are intricately woven together and embodied during eras of social upheaval. “The Anthropology of the Future” (Cambridge University Press, 2019), presents the concept of ‘orientations’ as a way to study the indefinite teleologies of everyday life. The book was translated into Turkish “Gelecegin Antropolojisi” in 2024 (Ankara: FOL). "Vertiginous Life: An Anthropology of Time and the Unforeseen" (Berghahn, 2021) proposes a theory of temporal vertigo, or how people experience the existential affects of life in crisis. “Energy Talk: Green Knowledge from Greece's Silicon Plains” (Cornell University Press, 2025) puts forward the concept of ‘adelo-knowledge’, unpacking how new conglomerations of knowledge emerge around the renewable energy industry.
Stemming from a long-term interest in the philosopher of science, Michel Serres, Daniel is co-editor of "Porous Becomings: Anthropological Engagements with Michel Serres" (Duke University Press, 2024). He has also co-edited “Ethnographies of Austerity: Temporality, Crisis and Affect in Southern Europe” (Routledge, 2017) and has edited special collections on “Alternatives to Austerity”, “Orientations to the Future”, "Emptiness", "The Vertiginous: Temporalities and Affects of Social Vertigo" and "Polycrisis". He is co-editor of “History and Anthropology” journal, convenes the ASA's "Anthropology of Time Network" and is an Associate of the Higher Education Academy. His research has been funded by HERA-CHANSE, the ESRC, EPSRC, Leverhulme Trust, British Academy and National Bank of Greece.
Daniel has delivered keynote addresses to national bodies and associations, including the Israeli Anthropological Association, the Italian Society for Cultural Anthropology, the Danish Association of Anthropologists (MegaSeminar), to the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, at the 4EU+ Prague Spring School, and keynote interdisciplinary humanities lectures in Luxembourg and Manchester. In 2024 he took up a visiting fellow position at Johns Hopkins University in Comparative Thought and Literature, hosted by Profs Jane Bennett and William Connolly.
Research Interests / Supervision Topics:
Philosophical Anthropology, History and Anthropology, Economic Anthropology, Anthropology of the Future, Anthropology of Crisis, Time and Temporality, Renewable Energy and Sustainable Economic Development, Modern Greece, European (especially Balkan and Mediterranean) Anthropology, Michel Serres
Address: Department of Social Anthropology, University of St Andrews, 71 North Street, St Andrews, Fife, KY16 9AL, Scotland
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Artwork by Daniel M. Knight
Talk based on the book Porous Becomings around themes of porosity, contracts, and curiosity with an audience of self-certified 'Serres experts'. The video is now on YouTube and also available as a podcast.
Chaired by Christopher Watkin at Monash University, Melbourne.
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiGE9rUfKp4&list=PLxANrwHw1aQ6WB479Etf8waq6CYAujUlY&index=37
Podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/social-contract-network
Books by Daniel M. Knight
Bu kitap, insanı ve kültürleri anlamada geleceğin ve gelecek bilincinin oynadığı role odaklanıyor. Aristoteles ve Augustinus’tan Husserl, Heidegger, Ricoeur, ve Schatzki’ye kadar uzanan bir düşünce geleneğinin ışığında, geleceğin bizim için hazırladıklarını ve bizim geleceğe hazırlanma tarzlarımızı ortaya koyarak, geleceği antropolojiye dâhil etmenin ve antropolojiyi geleceğe taşımanın koşullarını belirlemeyi amaçlıyor. İnsanı gündelik pratikleri içinde gelecekle, henüz olmamış olanla, “olandan başka”yla kurduğu ilişki üzerinden ele almanın, “yeni” ve geleceğe miras bırakılabilecek bir sosyal antropoloji geliştirmenin olanağını araştırıyor.
Contributor(s): Jane Bennett, Tom Boylston, Steven Brown, Matei Candea, Alberto Corsín Jiménez, David Henig, Michael Jackson, Celia Lowe, Morten Nielsen, Stavroula Pipyrou, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Andrew Shryock, Arpad Szakolczai
Building on a philosophical tradition running from Aristotle
through Heidegger to Schatzki, this book presents the concept
of “orientations” as a way to study the indefinite teleologies
of everyday life. Six main orientations are discussed –
anticipation, expectation, potentiality, speculation, hope and
destiny – all of which represent differing depths of time, and
different, though often related, ways in which the future may
affect our present. While orientations entail planning, hoping
for, and imagining the future, they also often entail the collapse
or exhaustion of those efforts: moments where hope may turn
to apathy, frustrated planning to disillusion, and imagination to
fatigue. By examining these orientations at different points, the
authors argue for an anthropology that takes fuller account of
the teleologies of action. In so doing, they introduce a robust
understanding of the quotidian into anthropology’s grappling
with the everyday, and thereby chart a new future for future
in the discipline.
One of the themes linking diverse crisis experiences across national boundaries is how people contemplate their present conditions and potential futures in terms of the past. The studies in this collection thus supply ethnographies that journey to the source of historical production by identifying the ways in which the past may be activated, lived, embodied, and refashioned under contracting economic horizons. In times of crisis modern linear historicism is often overridden (and overwritten) by other historicities showing that in crises not only time, but history itself as an organizing structure and set of expectations, is up for grabs and can be refashioned according to new rules.
Papers by Daniel M. Knight
"Have you ever felt like time was standing still, that you were trapped in a repeating spin-cycle? Perhaps you were suddenly aware of your presence in the present; peering down on yourself from a corner of the room, just another set of eyes watching the drama unfold in the theatre of life. You may have been clinging by your fingernails to something that is being swept away by forces beyond your control; a heart-wrenching lost cause in the face of unexpected change. There might have been times when you have been trapped in the ricochets of rapidly onrushing pasts, the inescapable present and the cliff-edge of impending futures, experiencing confusion as to where and when to turn. Time becomes elastic, the world is whirling, it feels like temporal rhythms are undergoing a tectonic shift, and material objects, sights and sounds seem uncanny. Perhaps there are signs of unstoppable epochal change, nothing will ever be the same … Out with the old and in with the something else. Or maybe the sense is one of haunting, of something past returning in a weird, unexpected way. The vertiginous takes hold."
Talk based on the book Porous Becomings around themes of porosity, contracts, and curiosity with an audience of self-certified 'Serres experts'. The video is now on YouTube and also available as a podcast.
Chaired by Christopher Watkin at Monash University, Melbourne.
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WiGE9rUfKp4&list=PLxANrwHw1aQ6WB479Etf8waq6CYAujUlY&index=37
Podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/social-contract-network
Bu kitap, insanı ve kültürleri anlamada geleceğin ve gelecek bilincinin oynadığı role odaklanıyor. Aristoteles ve Augustinus’tan Husserl, Heidegger, Ricoeur, ve Schatzki’ye kadar uzanan bir düşünce geleneğinin ışığında, geleceğin bizim için hazırladıklarını ve bizim geleceğe hazırlanma tarzlarımızı ortaya koyarak, geleceği antropolojiye dâhil etmenin ve antropolojiyi geleceğe taşımanın koşullarını belirlemeyi amaçlıyor. İnsanı gündelik pratikleri içinde gelecekle, henüz olmamış olanla, “olandan başka”yla kurduğu ilişki üzerinden ele almanın, “yeni” ve geleceğe miras bırakılabilecek bir sosyal antropoloji geliştirmenin olanağını araştırıyor.
Contributor(s): Jane Bennett, Tom Boylston, Steven Brown, Matei Candea, Alberto Corsín Jiménez, David Henig, Michael Jackson, Celia Lowe, Morten Nielsen, Stavroula Pipyrou, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Andrew Shryock, Arpad Szakolczai
Building on a philosophical tradition running from Aristotle
through Heidegger to Schatzki, this book presents the concept
of “orientations” as a way to study the indefinite teleologies
of everyday life. Six main orientations are discussed –
anticipation, expectation, potentiality, speculation, hope and
destiny – all of which represent differing depths of time, and
different, though often related, ways in which the future may
affect our present. While orientations entail planning, hoping
for, and imagining the future, they also often entail the collapse
or exhaustion of those efforts: moments where hope may turn
to apathy, frustrated planning to disillusion, and imagination to
fatigue. By examining these orientations at different points, the
authors argue for an anthropology that takes fuller account of
the teleologies of action. In so doing, they introduce a robust
understanding of the quotidian into anthropology’s grappling
with the everyday, and thereby chart a new future for future
in the discipline.
One of the themes linking diverse crisis experiences across national boundaries is how people contemplate their present conditions and potential futures in terms of the past. The studies in this collection thus supply ethnographies that journey to the source of historical production by identifying the ways in which the past may be activated, lived, embodied, and refashioned under contracting economic horizons. In times of crisis modern linear historicism is often overridden (and overwritten) by other historicities showing that in crises not only time, but history itself as an organizing structure and set of expectations, is up for grabs and can be refashioned according to new rules.
"Have you ever felt like time was standing still, that you were trapped in a repeating spin-cycle? Perhaps you were suddenly aware of your presence in the present; peering down on yourself from a corner of the room, just another set of eyes watching the drama unfold in the theatre of life. You may have been clinging by your fingernails to something that is being swept away by forces beyond your control; a heart-wrenching lost cause in the face of unexpected change. There might have been times when you have been trapped in the ricochets of rapidly onrushing pasts, the inescapable present and the cliff-edge of impending futures, experiencing confusion as to where and when to turn. Time becomes elastic, the world is whirling, it feels like temporal rhythms are undergoing a tectonic shift, and material objects, sights and sounds seem uncanny. Perhaps there are signs of unstoppable epochal change, nothing will ever be the same … Out with the old and in with the something else. Or maybe the sense is one of haunting, of something past returning in a weird, unexpected way. The vertiginous takes hold."
LISTEN AT: https://newbooksnetwork.com/vertigo
RUTGERS - 24.12.2021
With Alize Arican
INTERVIEW WITH DANIEL M. KNIGHT
"Vertiginous Life"
ATHENS — 11.12.2021
MOVEMENT RADIO: The Archipelago
With Yannis-Orestis Papadimitriou
INTERVIEW WITH DANIEL M. KNIGHT
“A Life of Vertigo in the Greek Crisis”
Knight draws on long-term ethnographic research on temporality, historical consciousness, and economic relations in the region of western Thessaly to examine how in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis Greeks interpret and resist austerity measures through the deployment of ironic slogans. These slogans reference resonant themes of food and historical periods of collective suffering in order to criticize political elites’ neoliberal policies. Such satirical forms become sites of resistance and solidarity that reframe relations between local people, their government, and international creditors.
History and Anthropology publishes articles which develop these concerns, and is particularly interested in linking new substantive analyses with critical perspectives on anthropological discourse. The journal publishes studies of: economic, religious and linguistic change; European and non-European colonial systems; transformations of art and material culture; gender in history and culture; encounters with and images of "others"; the influences of anthropological representations upon indigenous consciousness and culture; the various contributions of anthropology to colonial practice; and the development of ethnological and anthropological ideals and investigative techniques.
The editor therefore welcomes regional and thematic studies oriented towards wider analytic or critical issues. All papers should be aimed at the wider group of those interested in anthropology, history and discourse, rather than sub-disciplinary traditions; articles concerned with particular geographic regions or debates should therefore not presume prior knowledge of the area.
Three-day Conference, Lower College Hall / Parliament Hall, University of St Andrews, 14-16 March 2018
Daniel M. Knight (University of St Andrews) [email protected] and Rebecca Bryant (Utrecht University) [email protected]
The future has gotten short shrift in anthropology. In her landmark 1992 essay on the anthropology of time, Nancy Munn observed that in the discipline, ‘the future tends to be a displaced temporal topic, absent from its homeland in the past-present-future relation’ (p. 116). She speculates that the reason for this is anthropology’s focus on ‘long-term historical-mythic time’, which lends itself to a focus on the past. Despite a growing anthropological interest in time, often temporality becomes truncated at the relation between past and present, where the future often represents an unknown against which persons struggling to maintain stability cling to particular histories.
The future emerged as a developing field for anthropology in the 2000's, when the ‘war on terror’ and global financial crisis and its aftershocks left many people around the world unable to anticipate the following day. Combined with developing literatures on risk and finance, as well as climate change and alternative energies, it became clear that any return of the past was directly related to the uncertain future. Moreover, the past itself seemed foreshortened by social media, which effectively telescoped the immediate future as an anticipated present. Probability, anticipation, and expectation all acquired new subjects and methods as anthropologists began to examine the frenzy of trading floors and the future of the anthropocene.
In outlining the study of the future as a newly emerging field for anthropology, this conference invites ethnographic interrogation of precarious futures that reshape historical and temporal consciousness; including but not limited to financial crisis, large-scale displacement, climate change, romantic relationships, off-planetary exploration, and scenario planning. What assumptions have previously led to a blindness to the future and what changes about anthropology’s method and scope when we incorporate the future more centrally into the past-present-future relation?
The conference is organised around what we call ‘orientations’. While orientations (potentiality, speculation, destiny, expectation, anticipation, hope and their opposites, apathy, exhaustion, resignation) entail planning for and imagining the future, they also often entail the collapse of those efforts. Contributors will speak to particular orientation(s) to examine both the temporal dynamism and potential temporal stasis of charting new individual and collective futures.
Three-day Conference, Lower College Hall / Parliament Hall, University of St Andrews, 14-16 March 2018
Daniel M. Knight (University of St Andrews) [email protected] and Rebecca Bryant (Utrecht University) [email protected]
The future has gotten short shrift in anthropology. In her landmark 1992 essay on the anthropology of time, Nancy Munn observed that in the discipline, ‘the future tends to be a displaced temporal topic, absent from its homeland in the past-present-future relation’ (p. 116). She speculates that the reason for this is anthropology’s focus on ‘long-term historical-mythic time’, which lends itself to a focus on the past. Despite a growing anthropological interest in time, often temporality becomes truncated at the relation between past and present, where the future often represents an unknown against which persons struggling to maintain stability cling to particular histories.
The future emerged as a developing field for anthropology in the 2000's, when the ‘war on terror’ and global financial crisis and its aftershocks left many people around the world unable to anticipate the following day. Combined with developing literatures on risk and finance, as well as climate change and alternative energies, it became clear that any return of the past was directly related to the uncertain future. Moreover, the past itself seemed foreshortened by social media, which effectively telescoped the immediate future as an anticipated present. Probability, anticipation, and expectation all acquired new subjects and methods as anthropologists began to examine the frenzy of trading floors and the future of the anthropocene.
In outlining the study of the future as a newly emerging field for anthropology, this conference invites ethnographic interrogation of precarious futures that reshape historical and temporal consciousness; including but not limited to financial crisis, large-scale displacement, climate change, romantic relationships, off-planetary exploration, and scenario planning. What assumptions have previously led to a blindness to the future and what changes about anthropology’s method and scope when we incorporate the future more centrally into the past-present-future relation?
The conference is organised around what we call ‘orientations’. While orientations (potentiality, speculation, destiny, expectation, anticipation, hope and their opposites, apathy, exhaustion, resignation) entail planning for and imagining the future, they also often entail the collapse of those efforts. Contributors will speak to particular orientation(s) to examine both the temporal dynamism and potential temporal stasis of charting new individual and collective futures.