Matthew Crawford

Matthew Crawford is a philosopher and bestselling author of Shop Class as Soulcraft whose work has sparked a national conversation about the dignity of manual labor the tyranny of knowledge work and what we lose when we devalue skilled trades and hands-on craftsmanship. His contrarian insights challenge the assumption that the best careers involve sitting at desks pushing paper or pixels arguing instead that meaningful work often involves making tangible things solving real problems and mastering skills that connect mind and hand. Crawford’s thought-provoking presentations push audiences to reconsider their assumptions about work success and what it means to build a life of purpose and competence in a world increasingly disconnected from physical reality.

Keynote speaker Matthew Crawford’s New York Times best-selling book, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work, brings alive an experience that was once quite common, but now seems to be receding from society— the experience of making and fixing things with your hands. Those of us who sit in an office often feel a lack of connection to the material world, a sense of loss, and find it difficult to say exactly what we do all day. For anyone who felt hustled off to college, then to the cubicle, against their own inclinations and natural bents, Shop Class as Soulcraft seeks to restore the honour of the manual trades as a life worth choosing. For anyone who feels thwarted by their own material stuff, Crawford makes a case for reclaiming some measure of self-reliance.

As a speaker, Matthew Crawford draws from the history of philosophy to consider how our economic choices form us (and deform us). In doing so, he turns an inquiring gaze on the absurdities of the modern workplace, the psychology of consumerism, and some of the weirder consequences of our technological enthusiasm.  Often darkly funny, he mixes stories of contemporary life with careful arguments to illuminate our ongoing struggle to live a fully human life, and to figure out what such a life might consist of.

Crawford majored in physics as an undergraduate, then turned to political philosophy, earning a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Currently a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, he is also a contributing editor of The New Atlantis, and has written for The New York Times. Crawford also runs a motorcycle repair business in Richmond, Virginia.

Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work

The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction.