Dr Stefan Herbrechter is Senior Lecturer in Cultural Analysis at Trinity and All Saints, College of the University of Leeds, where he teaches courses in Cultural Studies, Critical and Cultural Theory, and Literature. He is the author of Lawrence Durrell: Postmodernism and the Ethics of Alterity (1999) and co-editor of a number of books, including Cultural Studies: Interdisciplinarity and Practice (2002), Discipline and Practice: The (Ir)resistibility of Theory (2004), Post-Theory, Culture, Criticism (2004), Metaphors of Economy (2005), Communities (2006), and The Matrix in Theory (2006). He has also published articles and essays on a variety of issues, including cosmopolitanism, masculinity, deconstruction and cultural studies, postmodernism and film, and posthumanism. He is a member of the editorial board of Rodopi’s Critical Studies journal and book series, and together with Dr Ivan Callus he directs a monograph series for Rodopi on "Critical Posthumanisms" (from 2006).

Dr Herbrechter’s paper is part of an ongoing critical investigation into the variety of symptoms, representations and projections of the posthuman and its associated theorisations. In particular, it evaluates the fundamental but ambivalent role gender has been playing within the genealogy of the posthuman. The paper traces and critiques the ways in which posthumanist discourses address the highly controversial idea of technology being able to ‘overcome’ gender differences and possibly gender as a social marker as such. Communications Office 16 Feb 06