Our inaugural NUCUSP event!

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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.

NU-CUSP Member Oscar Horton Chandler writes Reflections on the AHRC Utopia and Failure Network Workshop in Newcastle

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Oscar Horton Chandler acted as a Rapporteur for the AHRC Utopia and Failure Network workshop in Newcastle in September 2024.

In a blog post on the AHRC Utopia and Failure network blog, Oscar provided some reflections. You can read the blog post: Reflections on our second workshop in Newcastle by Oscar Horton Chandler (I) | School of Social and Political Science

NU-CUSP host a creative methods workshop with Rebecca Coleman 

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On 11th June 2025, Rebecca Coleman led a creative methods workshop. Rebecca is Professor in the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies at Bristol University. She led academics and researchers in a creative exercise of building utopias as part of a teach-out at Newcastle University. Against the backdrop of a Higher Education sector that is in crisis, with UCU strikes at Newcastle, people gathered in the local pub to create a space where it might be possible to engage in alternative utopian worldbuilding.

You can read about the workshop on the AHRC Utopia and Failure network blog: Practical utopias: A creative methods workshop | School of Social and Political Science

New Blog Post by NU-CUSP Member Miranda Iossifidis

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Miranda Iossifidis writes with Mack Sproates and Bethan for AHRC Network Utopia and Failure about ‘Exploring speculative climate justice futures with creative methods’

Read the blog post discussing their Zine-making workshops: Exploring speculative climate justice futures with creative methods | School of Social and Political Science

This zine is made by the Speculative Climate Futures zine workshop folks, including Ansh Meeta, Francesca DiGiorgio, Jim Kaufman, Shevek Fodor & Sophie Buxton. The beautiful cover, paintings and zine layout are by Mack.