Imaginaries of the Future was a Leverhulme International Research Network dedicated to establishing an interdisciplinary network interested in thinking through how we (might) think about the future. Running from June 2014-August 2017, it did not advance specific visions of the future as such, but rather sought to develop strategies for conceptualising ‘the future’, without doing violence to the bodies that might inhabit and (re)produce it. Its focus was utopian rather than futurological, and it was grounded in the knowledge that the utopian should not be reduced to the fanciful, impossible or authoritarian.
To this end, six symposia were organised between 2014-2017. These included presentations from a wide-range of academics, artists, activists and film-makers. A number of papers from these symposia have been published (or will be) across three special issues of the Open Library of Humanities. The network also commissioned films and produced an exhibition featuring work by Architecture students from Newcastle University, the network’s host institution.
Imaginaries of the Future 