Professor of Visual Culture in the Middle East and North Africa at Birmingham City University, and the series editor for Research/Practice, Sternberg Press. He sits on the editorial boards of Third Text, Digital War and Memory, Mind & Media. Downey is currently the recipient of a four-year multidisciplinary Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) award that focuses his research on cultural practices and educational provision for children with disabilities in Lebanon, the occupied Palestinian territories, and Jordan (2021–2025).
Modern warfare, currently playing out in the Middle East, relies on algorithms that often foreshadow further violence. But is the predilection for predicting attacks more a deterrent or provocation? And is managing risk a matter of neo-colonial imperialism rather than defence?
