Dr Ramon Amaro

Profile

Ramon Amaro’s writing, research and practice emerge at the intersections of Black Study, psychopathology, digital culture, and the critique of computation reason. He draws on Frantz Fanon’s theory of sociogenic alienation to problematise the de-localisation of the Black psyché in contemporary computational systems, such as machine learning and artificial intelligence. Ramon’s research pulls away from notions of psychic negation, as set forth by the Fanonian model of representation, to investigate alternative modes of relation between race and technology. His ultimate aim is to develop new methodologies for the study of race and digital culture. Ramon is under contract from Sternberg/MIT Press to write a monograph on machine learning, race, and the philosophy of being, provisionally titled Machine Learning, Sociogeny and the Substance of Race. He is a founding member of the Queer Computing Consortium (QCC), which investigates the “languages” of computation in its role in shaping locally embedded community practices.

Ramon has been on the Commissioning Board for the AHRC supported Ada Lovelace Institute JUST AI Network call for fellows in racial justice in AI, an advisor to the Barbican London major exhibition “AI: More Than Human”, Het Niuewe Instituut (Rotterdam) Research Fellowship, and Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (KABK), Design Academy Eindhoven (DAE), and the Dutch Art Institute Roaming Academy. He has participated in the Russian Pavilion at the 2020 Venice Biennial of Architecture, the Dutch Pavilion at the 2019 Milan Triennale, Dubai Design Week, and the Dutch Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Biennial of Architecture. Ramon has also taught summer school programmes in Hong Kong at the Tai Kwun Summer Academy, in Mexico City at Materia Abierta, and remotely in Utrecht at “Posthuman Convergence” summer school, organised by Prof. Rosi Braidotti.

Contact Details

Office: Room 303, 20 Gordon Square.

Office hours: Mondays, 2-5pm amd Thursdays, 2-5pm.

Email: r.amaro@ucl.ac.uk

Appointment

Lecturer in Art and Visual Cultures of the Global South

Dept of History of Art

Faculty of S&HS

Research Themes

Machine learning; Black aesthetics; art of the global south; philosophy of mathematics; race and racialisation; digital culture and computational reason.

Research

Research Summary

Dr Ramon Amaro teaches visual and critical theories of the Global South. He received his doctorate at Goldsmiths, University of London, while holding a Masters degree in Sociological Research from the University of Essex and a BEng in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He has worked as Assistant Editor for the SAGE open access journal Big Data & Society; quality design engineer at General Motors; and programmes manager for the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).

Research Activities

Publications

Selected Publications

Books

Amaro, Ramon. Machine Learning and the Substance of Race. (Berlin and Cambridge, Mass.: Sternberg/MIT), 2021.

Articles

Amaro, Ramon. “Towards a Black Psychic Individuation and Calculus of Variations ,” e-flux, May 2020.
Amaro, Ramon. “Machine Diagnosis,” open!, May 2020. https://onlineopen.org/machine-diagnosis.
Amaro, Ramon. “‘Threshold Value,” e-flux architecture, February 2020. https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/education/322664/threshold-value.
Amaro, Ramon. “As If,” e-flux architecture 97, February 2019. https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/becoming-digital/248073/as-if.
Amaro, Ramon. “Digital Hysteria: A Proposal on Violence and Humanism.” HYSTERIA: a collection of feminisms no. 7 (Summer 2016).

Book Sections

Amaro, Ramon. “The empirical reality of AI and a racialised future.” In AI - More than Human. London: Barbican, London, 2019.
Amaro, Ramon. “Artificial Intelligence: warped, colorful forms and their unclear geometries.” In Schemas of Uncertainty: Soothsayers and Soft AI, eds. Danae Io and Callum Copley, 69-90. Amsterdam: PUB/Sandberg Instituut, 2019.
Amaro, Ramon. “Afrofuturism.” In Posthuman Glossary, eds. Rosi Braidotti and Maria Hlavajova, 17-19. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018.
Amaro, Ramon. “Precognition.” In Posthuman Glossary, eds. Rosi Braidotti and Maria Hlavajova, 365-367. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018.

Live Performances

Darkness, as a first act of creation, by Ramon Amaro, directed by Ramon Amaro, live performance in “I See That I See What You Don't See,” curated by Het Nieuwe Instituut for the Dutch Pavillion, XXII Triennale di Milano, Milan, 2019.
Movement and De:Colonial Vibrations, by Ramon Amaro and Conrad Moriarty-Cole, directed by Ramon Amaro, live performance in “Uncertainty Seminars: The Strange Escape,” STROOM, The Hague, NL, 2017.

Teaching and Supervision

Ramon Amaro is interested in supervising PhD students in the areas of critical computational theory, digital ethics and aesthetics, race theory and the study of race, postcolonial study, and the history and theory of mathematics.

Current PhD students include Murad Khan, Victoria McKenzie and Corinna Canali, who work at the intersections of critical computational theory, digital culture, postcolonialism and critical ecologies. Their projects are funded by one or more of the following: CHASE Doctoral Training Partnership, The London Arts & Humanities Partnership (LAHP), Postgraduate Training Scholarship (Administration of the Province of Bolzano, Italy), and the Ontario (Canada) Student Assistance Program.