I am a philosopher by training and a writer, teacher, editor, and advisor by vocation.
I wrote my doctoral dissertation on the work of Pierre Hadot, centered especially on his notion of philosophy as a way of life rooted in askēsis, meaning exercise or practice, but I also spend my time studying religion, contemplative traditions, media ecology, and the psychology of perceptual learning.
I am interested in how these practices connect with the affordance environments and technologies that amplify or constrain our efforts. The Greek gymnasium, the monastic cell, the library or study—these are crafted spaces that afford practice in the same way an amphitheater affords musical performance, a telegraph affords communication, or a telescope affords distant observation.
My professional background is in editing and publishing, both in academia and in the nonprofit world. I spent several years teaching grad students how to write strong and compelling research papers. More recently, I worked as an advisor helping people think more carefully about the relationship between the humanities and technology.
I’m the founding editor of The Side View (2018–2022), an independent publication and media organization. We published articles online and in print exploring the idea that perception is a skill or art form of its own. We drew from architects, designers, philosophers, contemplatives (east and west), medievalists, long-term thinkers, cognitive scientists, psychologists, BJJ black belts, Stoics, and more.
I also run a sometimes private and sometimes public lecture series in the San Francisco Bay Area focused on renewing contemplation and the humanities in the twenty-first century. It’s called The Theōros Project. These days my attention is on circulating deep humanities work in spaces between and beyond existing academic infrastructure.
Feel free to get in touch at: @AE_Robbert, Substack, or ae.robbert@gmail.com.