CAPPE Conference | Utopias

Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics (CAPPE)
10^th Annual, International, Interdisciplinary Conference

Wednesday 2^nd – Friday 4^th September 2015

University of Brighton, UK

Keynote Speaker: Owen Hatherley 

The idea of utopia was always been two faced. On the one hand it was the place that is no place (u-topos) – the ideal that could only be imagined. On the other it was the eu-topos of the ancients, the place where the good life could finally be realised. This conference calls on contributors to play both faces: first, to engage in fantastical reimagining of how we live now, to think outside of all the forms of convention which delimit our vision of the future; second, to think of utopia as a form of critique of what is the case in the name of what could be the case. This means taking risks in thinking about transforming our world for the better, and doing so from the radically disparate disciplines within which this idea has been posited – philosophy, politics, architecture, design, literature, film, engineering and education to name only a few. It means also taking seriously the idea of dystopias, both real and imagined.

This conference aimed both to think and practice a form of politics that is creative, egalitarian, radical and interdisciplinary against all existing conventions. We hope to attract colleagues from a wide range of disciplines who wish to pose questions of Utopia, whether in transdisciplinary or interdisciplinary ways or from within a single discipline.