Participant Info

First Name
Audrey
Last Name
Borowski
Affiliation
Cambridge University
Website URL
https://www.mctd.ac.uk/team-members/audrey-borowski/
Keywords
Technopolitics, Technoauthoritarianism, History of Computing, History of Artificial Intelligence, Artificial Intelligence, Philosophy and History of Technology, Digital Humanities, Epistemology, History of Political Thought, Leibniz
Additional Contact Information
audreyborowski@yahoo.com

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

Dr Audrey Borowski is a Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge. Her monograph Leibniz in his World: The Making of a Savant was published by Princeton University Press in 2024. She was a postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Munich Centre for Mathematical Philosophy and the University of Bonn. She completed her doctorate (D.Phil) in the History of Ideas at the University of Oxford.

Audrey is currently working on several book projects including a Philosophical History of Computing and AI from Leibniz to the Present, and the ‘Algorithmization of Ideology’, also a book project, which focuses more closely on 20th century philosophy and Technoauthoritarianism.

Audrey’s research background lies at the intersection of philosophy, history and technology and in the last few years she started working more closely on the philosophical history and philosophy of computing and AI. Audrey works on various projects pertaining to the philosophy of algorithms, computing and AI, including AI through the lens of 20th century philosophy, the relation between myth/ideology and AI, and AI and aesthestics.

Audrey convenes and hosts the ‘AI and Digital’ seminar series in partnership with The Philosopher:

https://www.youtube.com/@ThePhilosopher1923

 
Recent Publications

Leibniz in his World: The Making of a Savant (Princeton University Press,  2024), 320 pp. https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691260747/leibniz-in-his-world

Co-editor (with Nicholas Halmi), ‘Universal Histories’, special issue of Intellectual History Review 33.3 (September 2023) [articles by Audrey Borowski, Elisabeth Décultot, Daniel Fulda, Maike Oergel, Maurice Olender, Olivier Pot, Ann Thomson, and Sylvana Tomaselli]

Peer-reviewed articles and chapters:

‘Leibniz and AI’, special issue of Social Science Computer Review, ed. Elly R. Truitt, forthcoming spring 2025

‘Malaise and Crisis in the Algorithmic Civilization’, forthcoming in a special issue of the International Review of Applied Economics, ed. J. Michie and Suzanne Schneider, to be republished in hardcover by Oxford University Press [invited contribution on AI]

‘The Projector as Liminal and Ambiguous Figure: The Case of Gottfried Leibniz’, in Davide Crippa (ed.), The Crisis of Traditional Sciences (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming spring 2025)

‘Gilles Deleuze’s dream of a Non-Human future of Mankind’, in Jill Müller and Guido Giglioni (eds.), Automatons and Transhumanism (Heidelberg: Springer, forthcoming 2025)

‘Hans Blumenberg and the Absolutism of Data’, in Hannes Bajohr (ed.), Thinking on AI (Cambridge: Open Humanities Press), forthcoming December 2024

‘The Universal History to bring all Universal Histories to an end: The curious case of Volney’, in ‘Universal Histories’ issue of Intellectual History Review, 33.3 (2023), 491–505

‘Friedrich Meinecke or the Defeat of Cultural Historicism’, in Hermann Paul and Adriaan van Veldhuizen (eds.), Historicism as a Travelling Concept (London: Bloomsbury, 2020), pp. 165–85

Articles in Charles Wolfe and Dana Jalobeanu (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Early Modern Science and Philosophy (Heidelberg: Springer, online edition June 2020, print edition January 2021): ‘History of the Earth’, ‘Claude Perrault’, ‘Projectors’, ‘Republic of Letters’

Articles in the public press (print and online)

‘Günther Anders Philosopher of the Apocalypse’, Aeon, 17 May 2022 https://aeon.co/essays/gunther-anders-a-forgotten-prophet-for-the-21st-century

‘Hans Blumenberg: History, Metaphors and Fables’, Times Literary Supplement (TLS), 17 December 2021

‘Networks of Extraction’, Times Literary Supplement (TLS), 10 December 2021 https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/your-computer-is-on-fire-thomas-mullaney-atlas-of-ai-kate-crawford-review/

‘Golden handmaidens: How AI narratives have prompted critical reflection on human-machine relations’, TLS, 6 March 2021 https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/ai-narratives-stephen-cave-kanta-dihal-sarah-dillon-review-audrey-borowski/

‘Vanishing act: How Snobbery and Fashion Put Paid to Magic’, TLS, 12 February 2021 https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/decline-of-magic-michael-hunter-book-review/

‘Sentencing the Present: Critical Conversations in a Time of Crisis’, Public Seminar, 28 May 2020 https://publicseminar.org/essays/sentencing-the-present-part-four/

 ‘The Eternal Foreigner: Jewish Life and European Thought in the Eighteenth Century’, Times Literary Supplement, 6 March 2020

‘Cousin de Grainville or the Impossibility of Thought’, Blog of the Journal of the History of Ideas,  January 2019

‘Louis-Sebastien Mercier Revisited’, Blog of the Journal of the History of Ideas, August 2018

‘The Challenge of Contingency and Leibniz’s Cybernetic Thinking’, Blog of the Journal of the History of Ideas, February 2018

‘Leibnizian Musings on Intellectual Automation’, Marginalia: LA Review of Books Online, 28 March 2017

‘Leibniz and Deleuze on Paradox’, Blog of the Journal of the History of Ideas, September 2016

‘Leibniz and the Infinite Mechanism of Life’, Philosophy Now, March 2016 <philosophynow.org/issues/108/

‘Al Qaeda and ISIS : From Revolution to Apocalypse’, Philosophy Now, December 2015

‘Herder, Humboldt, Heidegger: Language as World-disclosure’, Philosophy Now, July 2015

Media Coverage
Country Focus
Expertise by Geography
British Isles, England, France, Germany, Russia, United States, Western Europe
Expertise by Chronology
17th century, 18th century, 19th century, Early Modern, Modern, 20th century, 21st century
Expertise by Topic
Capitalism, Computational, Economic History, Environment, Government, Labor, Law, Material Culture, Military, Politics, Public History, Science, Technology