So great to see Miranda Iossifidis‘s article on this out. It explores the speculative climate futures fabricated by population-focused environmental charities and non-profit organizations – how they draw on NGO Science Fiction (SF) capital and eco-emotions to promote neo-Malthusian ideas and interventions.

Open access: https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2025.2601613

Really enjoying starting my new academic year as part of this workshop at LIAS in Lüneburg today – fascinating papers rigorously interrogating utopia, desire, materialism and imagination in contexts of climate crisis and neo-liberalism. Thanks to Egidijus Mardosas and Jason Goldfarb for organising (and to Egidijus for sharing the quotes from Abensour below).

Lisa Garforth

Thanks to everyone who came along and contributed to a fantastic conversation about utopian, speculative and prefigurative thinking and methods on Mon 8th December.

We were lucky to have talks from Tom Schofield on AI future imaginaries; Ruth Houghton on utopia and constitutionalism; Oscar Horton Chandler on grief and hope in the Jeremy Corbyn wave.

Oscar and Ruth in action:

Thanks to the Law School for their support. We also had a couple of inventive round table discussions about our shared theoretical resources, methodologies and analytical approaches that we’ll be sharing here soon.

Reading Science/Fiction by cluster members Miranda Iossifidis and Lisa Garforth, along with Amy C. Chambers and Joanna Verran. We explore how readers use speculative fiction to make personal, political and civic sense of living in densely techno-scientific societies.