ABOUT

My name is Jennifer Hamilton, I am an academic, writer and budding urban farmer. This blog began as way of reflecting on my adventures on my bike. In fact, it was designed to directly demonstrate how easy it is to navigate Sydney on a bike. I occasionally write about bikes, but lots and lots of people are doing this important kind of advocacy in Sydney now and in much more sophisticated ways. So Bicycle User has become a blog about my research and art.

I hold a PhD in English Literature from the University of New South Wales. I am currently working on a book based on the dissertation. The project’s working title is ‘What is the cause of thunder?’: A Study of the Storm in King Lear. It explores the cultural history of Shakespeare’s King Lear with a focus on the storm scenes. The dissertation began by exploring the storm’s likely significance in the seventeenth century and how the storm has been constructed on stage over the centuries and how the storm’s significance has changed over time, and ended with a comprehensive re-reading of the play thinking about the storm as a material and meteorological force within the drama.

Broadly, I am interested in the intersection between meteorology and cosmology or the weather and ideology, and the way in which the weather features within our political and cultural imagination. I have taught in English at UNSW and the University of Wollongong and in the new Environmental Humanities school at UNSW. I have published various feature and review articles in Australian Humanities Review, Southerly, New Matilda, The Reader, ArtLink, LaLa (Live Art) and Das Superpaper.

I also work in Sydney as an artist and curator. My curatorial project include Tiny Stadiums Festival (2011), Time Machine Festival (2012, nominated for a SMAC award) and The Performance Lecture Project (2012-2013). My live art projects including Walking in the Rain (2011) and Sea Shanties for Dead Sailors (2012, with Craig Johnson).  My work Crown of Weeds was included in Diego Bonetto’s Wild Stories exhibition at Casula Powerhouse. The crown of weeds is a recurrent motif in my work, taken from a significant moment in King Lear, I constructed my own crown celebration of the submission of my thesis and then again for Wild Stories. In 2013 I also have become a proud member of The Yurt Empire. 

My everyday life project is Earlwood Farm, with my partner Craig Johnson.

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