Prof Daniel Knight

Prof Daniel Knight

Professor

Professor (Education and Research Focused)

Researcher profile

Phone
+44 (0)1334 46 2985
Email
dmk3@st-andrews.ac.uk
Office
Room 21, School 6
Location
United Colleges
Office hours
On research leave

 

Research areas

Books

2025    Energy Talk: Green Knowledge from Greece's Silicon Plains. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

2024    Porous Becomings: Anthropological Engagements with Michel Serres. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. (co-edited with Andreas Bandak).

2021    Vertiginous Life: An Anthropology of Time and the Unforeseen. New York, NY: Berghahn.

2019    The Anthropology of the Future. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (co-authored with Rebecca Bryant). Turkish Translation Gelecegin Antropolojisi. Ankara: FOL, 2024.

2017    Ethnographies of Austerity: Temporality, Crisis and Affect in Southern Europe. London: Routledge. ([with new Afterword], co-edited with Charles Stewart).

2015    History, Time, and Economic Crisis in Central Greece. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Edited Journal Collections

2023   Polycrisis. Anthropology Today 39(2). (with David Henig)

2022   The Vertiginous: Temporalities and Affects of Social Vertigo. Anthropological Theory Commons. (with Fran Markowitz and Martin Demant Frederiken)

2020    Emptiness. Cultural Anthropology, Theorizing the Contemporary. (with Dace Dzenovska)

2019    Orientations to the Future. American Ethnologist. (with Rebecca Bryant)

2017    Alternatives to Austerity. Anthropology Today 33(5). (with Laura Bear)

2016    Ethnographies of Austerity: Temporality, Crisis and Affect in Southern Europe. History and Anthropology 27(1). (with Charles Stewart)

Biography

Prof Daniel M. Knight is Professor of Philosophical Anthropology 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

PhD supervision

  • Faye Bamford
  • Daniel Davies
  • Cameron Dickie
  • Amara Doshi
  • Connor Eckersall
  • Connor Jennings
  • Andreas Lekkos
  • Hector Trujillo
  • Matteo Valenzasca

Selected publications

 

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