Dr Sheena Calvert

Dr. Sheena Calvert is a philosopher/artist/designer. She has an active interest in the intersections between a wide range of creative disciplines, including practices ranging from typography and experimental book-works, to works involving sound/performance. She is particularly concerned with exploring the implications of emergent language-based technologies, including developments in ‘natural’ language technologies, as a specific sub-set of developments in AI and Machine Learning. Her background in philosophy of language, aesthetics, and ethics provides a critical framework for these investigations and she has a long-standing interest in the materiality of language (text/speech), including its implications for how we form knowledge (of the world, and of ourselves). These concerns form a larger body of theory and practice-based research, entitled ‘metalanguage’. 

Sheena is interested in promoting a form of cross-disciplinary thinking which takes applied philosophy as its departure point[sc1] . A graduate of The Central School of Art, Yale University, and the Jan Van Eyck Academy, she is presently undertaking an MA in Global Ethics at King’s College.  

Sheena is currently co-editing a special edition of the Leonardo Electronic Almanac (MIT, due Spring 2020), on the topic of ‘Language Games’, examining the shifting interfaces between language and human beings, language and machines, and machines and other machines.