Utopias, Futures & Temporalities Conference

19 & 20th May 2015

This two-day interdisciplinary symposium brought together researchers, Civil Society Organisations,

NGOs and other groups concerned with questions of social and environmental change, humanitarian

challenges, and community empowerment and participation, with philosophers, artists, historians,

theorists, social scientists and other disciplines concerned with questions of temporality, futures and

utopias.

These images were created by Scriberia to capture the conversations in the panels, papers and

workshops.

For more information on each session, please refer to the abstracts book.

Chair’s Introduction

Opening Keynote

Ruth Levitas ‘The Necessity of Utopia’

Session 1: Examining Utopias

Johan Siebers ‘Utopian Laughter’

Sarah Amsler & Ana Dinerstein ‘Learning & Organising Hope’

Sue Cohen & Morag McDermont ‘The Marvellous & the Murderous: Imagining and Better World’

Jessica Symons ‘Operating in the realm of the ‘should’: the utopian imaginary and its obligations’

Session 2: Revolutionary Fictions

Joan Haran ‘Ecofeminist Utopias’

Hugo Garcia ‘The power of social nightmares: dystopian futures in Spanish literature, c. 1870-1960’

Reuben Knutson ‘The Preseli Hills Transcended’

James Duggan & Joseph Lindley ‘Co-producing design fictions as part of mundane utopian practice’

Session 5: Place, Landscape, Utopias

Jill Ebrey ‘Everyday Utopias: Place, Participation and Cooperation in Aberdeen’

Paul Allender & Prue Chiles ‘Making yourself at home in Park Hill – meanings of modernism & utopia’

Jo Vergunst, Elizabeth Curtis, Colin Shepherd & Jeff Oliver ‘Imagining Landscape Heritage Futures’

Michael Northcott ‘Utopian Visions of a Low Carbon Society and Climate Change Mitigation’

Workshop 3: Future Works 2050: the future of energy, industry and making

Renata Tyszczuk & Julia Udall

Workshop 4: Temporal Design: reimagining the materials of time

Michelle Bastian & Larissa Pschetz

Roundtable 1: How might the traditions of therapeutic communities and greencare inform our re-

visioning of social futures?

Chaired by Richard Haynes

The therapeutic community movement and greencare approaches to mental health are both

traditions that have at times been synonymous with utopian envisionings of the future. This

roundtable explores what insights and lessons these traditions might have for our social futures.

This cross-disciplinary and cross-sectoral roundtable will draw on the perspectives of an NHS

psychiatrist (Dr Rex Haigh), a professor of Utopian Studies (Professor Lucy Sargisson), a researcher in

public health (Dr Neil Chadborn) and a historian (Dr Jonathan Coope).

Roundtable 2: Ruins, temporalities, utopia and the city

Chaired by Johan Siebers

This roundtable brings researchers representing two projects into dialogue:

(i) ‘Re-Configuring Ruins: Materialities, Processes and Mediations.’ AHRC Care for the Future

Early Career Developmental Award (Carlos Lopez Galviz, Nadia Bartolini, Adam Stock)

(ii) ‘Imaginaries of the Future: Historicising the Present.’ Leverhulme International Research

Network (Nathaniel Coleman, Adam Stock)

Roundtable 3: Temporalities/Comunities/Sustainabilities: Frictions & Frissons in the Making of

Utopian Futures

Chaired by Richard Haynes

In this Roundtable we bring together researchers associated with both Care for the Future and

Connected Communities AHRC themes, to explore the work done by the key concepts of change,

temporality, ‘progress’ and Utopia.

Contributors: Sian Sullivan, Katherine Jones, Mike Hannis, Owain Jones

Roundtable 4: Energy: Utopias and scenarios

In this roundtable we will look to both the past and future to investigate cultural anticipation of

changed relationships with energy.

Contributors: Axel Goodbody, Joe Smith, Renata Tyszczuk, Bradon Smith

New Ideas Papers: Utopias, social change and temporality

Sarah Armstrong, Margaret Malloch & Bill Munro ‘Finding ‘justice’ in Utopia’

Adelina Ong ‘Multiplicities’

Diletta De Cristofaro ‘Post-Apocalyptic Critical Temporalities’

Darren Webb ‘Pedagogies of Hope and Utopia’

Closing Keynote

Kevin Birth ‘Kronos, Eukairoi, Oukairoi: Contrapuntal Temporalities for the Future’

Closing Discussion