BEING—BECOMING

Polycrisis or Collapse: Whose Futures? Why the Humanities Matter in Uncertain Times

Thursday 24 September

09.00 – 16.00 (13.00 – 14.00 lunch): Hybrid Symposium (online and in-person)

Friday 25 September

09.00 – 13.00: Writing workshop: Developing Papers for a Special Issue

The Conflict and Cooperation Cluster at the Vere Gordon Childe Centre, in partnership with the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (University of Cambridge) and the School of Humanities, University of Sydney, invites scholars from the humanities and adjacent disciplines to participate in BEING—BECOMING: Polycrisis or Collapse? Whose Futures? Why the Humanities Matter in Uncertain Times.

Global crises, catastrophes, existential risk, planetary instability and societal collapse are increasingly shaped by systems thinking, complexity science and risk analysis. Within these conversations, the concept of polycrisis has emerged as a framework for understanding how social, ecological, technological and political crises interact through complex feedback loops that may be either destructive or transformative. Alongside this, the language of collapse has re-emerged in both scholarly and public discourse, foregrounding questions of limits, irreversibility and systemic breakdown. While these frameworks offer important ways of understanding interconnected global challenges, they also invite critical reflection on how crises are understood, lived and narrated, whose perspectives they privilege, and what they reveal—or obscure—about pasts, presents and futures.

From climate breakdown and global conflict to artificial intelligence and political polarisation, these crises are lived through the intersections of everyday life, culture, materiality, history, memory, ethics and politics. While systems thinking foregrounds the dynamics of interconnected crises, the humanities draw attention to the longer histories, cultures and structures of power that continue to shape understandings and experiences of crisis, including colonialism, capitalism, extractivism, patriarchy and other enduring forms of inequality. Increasingly attentive to plural, Indigenous and decolonial forms of knowledge, the humanities illuminate the diverse ways uncertainty is understood, lived and contested across communities, places and temporalities. In doing so, they return us to enduring questions: what does it mean to be human—and more-than-human—in times of uncertainty, and whose futures are being imagined, protected or overlooked?

Call for Contributions: We invite colleagues and students from across the humanities and adjacent disciplines to present a provocation, novel idea, methodological intervention or work in progress that responds to the symposium's central question:

How could the humanities deepen our understanding of being and becoming in uncertain times, and what new perspectives do they offer on the concepts and language of polycrisis and collapse?

We welcome contributions that engage critically, creatively or experimentally with the symposium's central question and themes through historical, philosophical, literary, archaeological, artistic, ethnographic, practice-based or interdisciplinary approaches.

Participants will present a 10-15 minute provocation, lightning talk or work in progress, followed by 5 minutes of discussion. The themes below are intended as prompts rather than constraints, and contributors are warmly encouraged to develop their own approaches:

Polycrisis: Whose Futures?
How do different communities understand, experience and imagine systemic change? What assumptions underpin dominant futures, and whose knowledge, values and experiences shape them?

Imagining Otherwise: Radical Hope and Solarpunk
Exploring speculative fiction, eco-poetics, Indigenous futurisms, creative practice and radical hope as ways of imagining more just, sustainable and liveable futures.

Affective Futures: Emotion, Empathy and the Ethics of Care
Examining the emotional dimensions of uncertainty, including climate anxiety, grief, hope, empathy and care, and the role of the humanities in fostering collective wellbeing and repair.

De-Centring the Apocalypse: Whose Collapse?
Interrogating universal narratives of collapse by exploring how uncertainty, crisis and transformation are understood across diverse historical, cultural and political contexts.

Speeding Up and Slowing Down: The Humanities and Slow Knowledge
Considering the value of slow scholarship, historical perspective and critical reflection in an age of acceleration, artificial intelligence and techno-capitalism.

Critical Thinking and the Crises of Governance
Investigating the challenges posed by algorithmic governance, misinformation and political polarisation, and the contribution of the humanities to democratic cultures, historical literacy and public debate.

Multiscalarity: From the Granular to the Global
Exploring how local, everyday and embodied experiences intersect with planetary processes, global systems and long-term historical change.

To submit a proposal or discuss a possible contribution, please contact Dr Charlotte Feakins:

Charlotte.feakins@sydney.edu.au or Dr Kennedy Mbeva km937@cam.ac.uk

Submission Details

Abstract: 150-200 words

Submission deadline: 22 August 2026

Notification of acceptance: 1 September 2026

Symposium Conveners

Dr Charlotte Feakins

School of Humanities, University of

Sydney

Charlotte.feakins@sydney.edu.au

Dr Kennedy Mbeva

Centre for the Study of Existential Risk,

University of Cambridge

km937@cam.ac.uk

Image: Medium.com/Quartz

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