When: Monday 15th April (pm)/Tuesday 16th April (all day)

Where: University of Bristol (UK) / Remote presentations accepted

Cost: Free

 

Welcome/Introductory Keynote from Genevieve Liveley, Professor of Classics and Ancient History, University of Bristol.

 

In this symposium, we are interested in how anticipations and imaginaries of futures are narrated (or narrativized) in a variety of settings, from fiction and games to foresight programmes, non-fiction, and future scenarios.

 

In the current atmosphere of uncertainty regarding the future and amidst the 'storytelling boom' defining our 21st-century discursive environments, narratives of different future possibilities proliferate across media from speculative fiction to journalism and corporate storytelling and beyond. Future-oriented narratives are used in this situation to provide means for thinking about and imagining possible, plausible, desirable, and undesirable futures.

 

However, the ways in which the future is constructed in such narratives can both expand and delimit our capacities to anticipate different future possibilities – and the capacity of the narrative form itself to represent some key aspects of futures thinking, like plurality and open-endedness, is also a matter of debate. Therefore, this symposium invites considerations of how ancient and modern theories of narrative can inform our understanding of how narratives are used to construct, design and instrumentalize future imaginaries for social, policy, commercial and other purposes, as well as their intended and unintended affects, effects and consequences.

 

We invite proposals for 15 minute presentations with relevance to the above topic. We welcome presentations from across all disciplines and fields, but possible topics include:

 

- Technology futures

- Sociotechnical interactions

- Utopian/dystopian futures

- Interdisciplinary thinking and methods for studying futures narratives

- The role of imagination, speculation and visioning in commercial, media, policy and social settings

- Narratives of emerging technologies such as AI or the metaverse

- Game narratives

- Narrative and futures literacies

- Ancient and modern storytelling practices

- Applied narratology

 

We invite postgraduate researchers (PGR), early career researchers (ECR) and researchers at all career stages from across disciplines to contribute 15-minute presentations on topics related to this theme.

 

Please submit a proposal of maximum 300 words by 18th February using the following Microsoft Form: https://forms.office.com/e/0zHB1ebLbB.

 

Timeline:

Deadline for submitting abstracts: 5pm, 18th February 2024

Confirmation of acceptance: 1 March 2024

Program release and Registration open: 15 March 2024

Symposium: 15-16 April 2024

 

 

Organisers:

Elise Kraatila, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Tampere University

Cecilia Thirlway, PhD candidate in Classics, University of Bristol

 

For any further information, please contact: cecilia.thirlway@bristol.ac.uk elise.kraatila@tuni.fi