We are really lucky to have Phil Crockett Thomas joining us for a creative writing workshop as well as a more formal academic talk.

The session will be a space to create and discuss speculative fiction on the theme of more just societies. It draws on Phil’s research on the anti-carceral imagination and her edited book Abolition Science Fiction (2022), written with activists and scholars involved in the movement for prison abolition in the UK. There is no need to be an experienced writer or activist to take part. A small amount of preparatory reading will be shared in advance of the workshop.

Places are limited, please sign up if you want to take part.

Change Everything: ‘World Building’ in Science Fiction and Abolitionist Practices

Dr Phil Crockett Thomas joins us to give a Sociology Seminar. All welcome!

Abolition Science Fiction

We’re meeting on Tuesday April 28th 1-3.30pm HDB.1.04 to talk through a couple of readings linked to Miguel Abensour’s utopian theorising:

Feel free to join us for a discussion of one or both readings – drop in and out as suits.  Bring your own coffee, we’ll provide some snacks.

1.00pm Abensour, Miguel, ‘William Morris: The Politics of Romance’, in Revolutionary Romanticism, ed. and trans. by M. Blechman (City Lights Books, 1999), pp. 125–59. 

2.30pm Holflod, K., Bayne, S., & Nørgård, R. T. (2026). ‘Utopia, hope and desire in education futures.’ Arts and Humanities in Higher Education. Online first.

https://doi.org/10.1177/14740222251412851.

Abi Hockaday and Aparna Sivasanka are organising this fantastic conference at Newcastle University, June 11th-12th 2026. Panels will explore speculative fiction and relationships between gender and genre, especially how women – as writers, characters, fans – use, negotiate, and operate in science fiction and fantasy.

CONTACT:
sciencefictionfantasyncl@gmail.com

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.