We offer open and participatory events that showcase interdisciplinary work and impact and spark ideas, inspiration and debate.
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From their personal knowledge, our conversationalists will discuss the success of the original Edinburgh Conversations in the 1980s, and how in the context of the current global situation, the approach might be replicated.
What is the relationship between the digital and the museum? This question is at the heart of this 2-day conference.
Hear from experts on these and a range of other issues around the complex interplay between artificial intelligence, data and democracy.
Explore how automation and artificial intelligence could run the back office of your tourism or hospitality business.
A panel event featuring author Jeanette Winterson, robotics expert Ingo Keller, and advanced humanoid robot Ameca.
A conversation with award-winning novelist Bernardine Evaristo about arts provision in the education system, the importance of creativity in young people, and how creativity positively impacts society as a whole.
This event was programmed in collaboration with Race.ed.
A new performance from Studio Wayne McGregor and composer Chris Lyons.
The intersecting, planetary-scale crises we face bring new urgency to the debate about the purpose of education. Climate catastrophe, widening inequalities, conflict, pathogen spillovers, new diseases, failures of governance and technology acceleration all challenge us to ask again what education might be, and what we need it to do. The first conversation in the series ... Read more
Part of the University of Edinburgh's Edinburgh Futures Conversations series.
This event will discuss topics such as the role of video games in shaping our world and human development, and the gamification of education.
This workshop will generate material which will be collectively sung by the workshop participants at the event Entanglements: Studies in flowing, following, falling.
This 3-hour workshop will generate material which will be performed by the workshop participants at the event Entanglements: Studies in falling, flowing, following.
This event will entangle human and aquatic worlds, moving between freshwater and the deep ocean, learning through performance, video, music, poetry and song.
This discussion considers the role education has played in developing our technological landscape and how it can help work towards a fairer future.
Our Utopia Labs are ‘no-spaces’, places where everyone is welcome to join us in dreaming futures that inspire our experience of the present.
Our Utopia Labs are ‘no-spaces’, places where everyone is welcome to join us in dreaming futures that inspire our experience of the present.
In this Technomoral Conversations panel, we will hear from leading voices from the Majority World on what they have learned from and about AI, and the issues and visions they would like to see taken up.
A panel event marking the 10-year anniversary of Katie Paterson’s 100-year artwork, Future Library.
Part of the University of Edinburgh's Edinburgh Futures Conversations series.
Unco is a project to create a new Scots lexicon of LGBT+ words. These words are a proposal for how LGBT+ people can talk about themselves in Scots.
This event will bring together key figures from the Scottish education landscape to talk about AI in schools and our education futures.
Niranthea is a hybrid short film combining documentary, audiovisual synaesthesia and AI hearing algorithms to tackle the notions of Deafhood, prosthesis and cyborg.
Ex Silens is an experience into a radically alternative sensorium through the entanglement of multiple bodies, multiple agencies.
Our Autumn 2023 programme of events explored leadership in all its forms – from the seats of power to the front lines of activist movements and even in our own workplaces.
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Our Spring 2023 programme of events explored the interconnections of AI and data with humanity through conversations, performances, and workshops.
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Our Autumn 2022 programme featured more than 20 events exploring crisis, migration, displacement and equality coalescing around the theme of Climate Justice.
Watch recordings"The production and intellectual content of your recent events has been fantastic! Thank you for the opportunity to attend and learn. This is probably the best event I have been to all year."
Event attendee, Love Machine Spring 2023
"Really, really impressed with Futures Institute events. Properly impressive speakers, and seamless technical management. Thank you for keeping them hybrid/online – it's a really nice way to keep in touch!"
Event attendee, Love Machine Spring 2023
"Amazing! I hope that Utopia Lab can ring in every event season, the dream space that you curate and allow to flourish is an important and novel lens that Edinburgh Futures Institute offers partners, students, staff, researchers and anyone with an interest in collaborative thinking and doing."
Event attendee, Love Machine Spring 2023
Our public events seasons are co-created with people from across the University of Edinburgh. If you'd like to contribute ideas for the programme please contact the events team.
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Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) building, The University of Edinburgh, 1 Lauriston Place, Edinburgh, EH3 9EF
*Deliveries via West Entrance on Nightingale Way.
Email: efi@ed.ac.uk
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