The Gender Research Group’s Spring Conference is taking place on Friday, April 24th, 12-3pm in HDB1.09.

NUCUSP members Abi Hockaday and Miranda Iossifidis are presenting their work.

Abi Hockaday (English Literature, Language & Linguistics), “Reading the Technodomestic in Science Fiction” – I consider the relation between gender, the domestic, and technology, through a reading of Femizine, the first British science fiction fanzine written for women, by women, in the 1950s. It is the humour and playfulness that mark what I term the ‘technodomestic’ in the fanzine’s stories which helped create a community of women fans exploring cultural anxieties about women’s place in the home – and in fandom.

Miranda Iossifidis  (Geography, Politics & Sociology), “Resisting Population Control at Home and Internationally: Reproductive Justice and Campaigns against LARCs in the 1970s and 1980s” – I explore the solidarities, networks and tensions in feminist conversations and encounters constellated around resistance to population control, in activism against long-acting reversible contraception (LARCs) in the 1970s and 1980s, considering how activists centred racism, classism, and ableism experienced by women, and how they connected coercive practices, and populationist ideas and interventions in the United Kingdom to global population control policies. I undertake a situated analysis of the activisms, drawing on archival material to show how they are shaped by distinct histories of colonialism, racism, and geographies.

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

In her latest article in Global Constitutionalism, Ruth Houghton explores the relationship between theories of utopia and approaches to constitutional change in theories of constitutional law.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/global-constitutionalism/article/too-utopian-theories-of-utopia-in-constituent-power/0E9DDB1BD03AE971483CBACFFF413DDC?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_source=bookmark

The abstract of the paper reads: There is something utopian about constituent power, whether this is the unrealisable idea of “the people” or the world-building nature of constitutional change. However, in contemporary constitutional scholarship “utopia” is more often used as a pejorative critique of reform projects that are seen as idealistic ambitious calls for constitutional change, which might fail for being “too utopian”, “too idealistic”, “too unrealistic”. In an attempt to move beyond this critique, this article draws on alternative approaches to utopianism to uncover the temporal assumptions underpinning contemporary approaches to constituent power and highlights the different approaches that can be exposed if theories of utopian-thinking are foregrounded. Both utopia and constituent power are closely aligned with visions of alternative futures, and constitutional scholars agree that there is an intersection between utopian thinking and the subjectivities, temporalities and operationalisation of constituent power. Moving away from utilising utopia as a pejorative label and engaging instead with what it can expose about temporalities, offers alternative approaches to the study of constituent power.

NUCUSP Member, Ruth Houghton took part in a discussion on ‘Utopia as a Method’ for the Talking about Methods (Frontiers of Socio-Legal Studies) podcast.

In the episode, Professor Linda Mulcahy talks to Aislinn Fanning, Cristy Clark, Zoe Tongue and Ruth Houghton about utopia as a method. The discussion includes reflections on what utopia as a method is and how it can be used in research projects. The episode also covers the method’s limits and some of its downsides.

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

NUCUSP member, Dr Lisa Garforth will be speaking at an event in King’s College London in February on ‘New Directions in Utopian Studies’. Lisa’s paper is entitled, ‘Utopia as a social thing: on dreaming, doing, defining and describing’

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/new-directions-in-utopian-studies-tickets-1979739755903

This event is part of the AHRC network on Utopia and Failure.