Adam A. Stokes
Welcome to my personal webpage, where you’ll find a collection of essays on topics I’m actively trying to understand. These are not static publications but live documents that evolve over time as I think in public, refine my views, and respond to new ideas and conversations. If you wish to discuss anything I’ve written, or wish to engage with me on a project or a talk, then please contact me. My primary email address is a.a.stokes@ed.ac.uk.I am Full Professor and Head of the Institute for Bioengineering at the University of Edinburgh and a research-led advisor on robotics, AI, and bioinspired innovation. Outside of the academy I am an active entrepreneur and consultant. I work with organisations to stress-test assumptions about emerging technologies and chart practical paths from prototype to deployment. These essays capture the thinking behind that work—I offer them as a public resource and also as an invitation to collaborate.
My most recent post is shown below, see all essays here.
Techno-crofting: What Crosses the Boundary?
Energy, matter and life at the edge A few years ago I went to see the National Theatre of Scotland’s production of The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil at Dundee Rep. I had heard of John McGrath’s play, of course — it is one of those pieces of Scottish cultural furniture you assume you know without having sat in the room — but I had never seen it performed. Dundee Rep is a proper theatre, and yet the revival still carried the spirit the 7:84 company built for community stages: Gaelic song, statistics read aloud over reconstructions, audience members pulled into the action, laughter that turns sharp when you realise what you are laughing at. There is an excerpt here. The Cheviot is a musical drama in the roughest, most purposeful sense. The 7:84 company toured it through the 1970s into village halls on Lewis, South Uist, Benbecula — places where the audience often included people who had lived through what was being described. The play is built up in three movements, and...