Campus Directory

Division Humanities Division

Department/College/Unit History of Consciousness Department

Title Distinguished Professor

Affiliation Faculty

Other UCSC Campus Affiliation Philosophy Department

Faculty Type Regular Faculty

Primary Office Location Humanities Building 1
Rm 330

Additional Location(s) Humanities 1 Rm 330

Mail Stop Humanities Academic Services

Biography, Education and Training

Ph.D., Physics, SUNY Stony Brook
Karen Barad is Distinguished Professor of History of Consciousness at the University of California at Santa Cruz, with an affiliation in Philosophy. Barad's Ph.D. is in theoretical particle physics and quantum field theory. Barad held a tenured appointment in a physics department before moving into more interdisciplinary spaces. Barad is the author of Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning (Duke University Press, 2007) and numerous articles in the fields of physics, philosophy, science studies, and nuclear studies. Barad's research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Hughes Foundation, the Irvine Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Barad is a founding member of the Science & Justice Research Center and served as the Director of the Science & Justice Graduate Training Program at UCSC. Barad is the recipient of an honorary doctorate from Gothenburg University, a Fulbright fellowship, and the Kresge College Teaching Award, among other honors.

Research Interests

Science studies, multispecies studies, science & justice, physics, nuclear studies, continental philosophy, epistemology, ontology, ethics, politics, philosophy of physics

Selected Exhibitions

An Artistic/ Computer Animation Work: “Quarkland,” 3D computer animations of the physics of elementary particles for a CD-interactive version of Stephen Hawking’s best seller, A Brief History of Time. 1994. 

K. Barad & Blanca Rego (artist). 2020. “Touching Upon Touching (at the limit),” for the Barcelona Biennale of Thought, for Oct. 2020. 

Selected Publications

• Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007
• What is the Measure of Nothingness? Infinity, Virtuality, Justice / Was ist das Maß des Nichts? Unendlichkeit, Virtualität, Gerechtigkeit, dOCUMENTA (13): 100 Notes – 100 Thoughts / 100 Notizen – 100 Gedanken | Book Nº099 (English & German edition, 2012).
• "After the End of the World: Entangled Nuclear Colonialisms, Matters of Force, and the Material Force of Justice," in Theory & Event (2019) 22(3): 524-550.
• "Troubling Time/s and Ecologies of Nothingness: Re-turning, Re-member, and Facing the Incalculable," in New Formations: A Journal of Culture/Theory/Politics (2017) no.92, pp.56-86. 
• "What Flashes Up: Theological-Political-Scientific Fragments,” in Entangled Worlds: Religion, Science, and New Materialisms, edited by Catherine Keller and Mary-Jane Rubenstein (Fordham University Press, 2017).
• "No Small Matter: Mushroom Clouds, Ecologies of Nothingness, and Strange Topologies of SpaceTimeMattering," in Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet, edited by Anna Tsing, Heather Swanson, Elaine Gan, and Nils Bubandt (University of Minnesota Press, 2017).
• "Science & Justice: The Trouble and the Promise," coauthored with Jenny Reardon, Jake Metcalf, and Martha Kenney, in Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 1(1): 1-36, 2015.
• "Diffracting Diffractions: Cutting Together-Apart," in Parallax 20(3): 168-187, 2014, Special Issue on Diffracting Worlds, Diffractive Readings – Onto-Epistemologies and the Critical Humanities, edited by Kathrin Thiele and Brigit Kaiser.
• "Invertebrate Visions: Diffractions of a Brittlestar," in The Multispecies Salon (Duke U Press, 2014), edited by Eben Kirksey, pp. 221-241.
• "Intra-actions," Interview of Karen Barad by Adam Kleinmann, in Mousse Magazine (Milan, Italy), Summer 2012, Special issue on dOCUMENTA (13).
• “Quantum Entanglements and Hauntological Relations of Inheritance: Dis/continuities, SpaceTime Enfoldings, and Justice-to-Come,” in Derrida Today (Nov 2010), vol. 3, no. 2 : pp. 240-268, edited by Nicole Anderson and Peter Steves, 2010
• "Erasers and Erasures: Pinch's Unfortunate 'Uncertainty Principle'," in Social Studies of Science, vol. 41, no. 3, Spring 2011
• “Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter,” in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 28, no. 3, Spring 2003
• “Re(con)figuring Space, Time, and Matter,” in Feminist Locations: Global and Local, Theory and Practice, edited by Marianne DeKoven. New Brunswick: Rutgers U. Press, 2001
• “Reconceiving Scientific Literacy as Agential Literacy, or Learning How to Intra-act Responsibly Within the World,” in Doing Culture + Science, ed. by Roddey Reid and Sharon Traweek. NY: Routledge, 2000
• “Complementarity: Dichotomies in Perspective,” in The Barnard Occasional Papers, Vol. IV, No.1, 1989
• “A Quantum Epistemology And Its Impact On Our Understanding of Scientific Process,” in The Barnard Occasional Papers, Vol. III No.1, 1988
• “Quark-Antiquark Charge Distributions and Confinement,” in Physical Letters 143B, 222, K. Barad, M. Ogilvie, C. Rebbi, 1984
• “Minimal Lattice Theory of Fermions,” in Physical Review D30, 1305, 1984