Reading meetings and events
We are pleased to announce the programme of events of the Critical Hope Collective for Spring 2026. After a very productive series of reading meetings on critical engagements with hope across a range of disciplines in 2024-25, we are turning to explore the three themes of hospicing modernity, imagination and abolition through slightly longer, workshop format meetings.
Our aim is to engage with these approaches through participatory activities as well as discussion of reading and other materials. The preparatory readings for each workshop are extracts from books that are available as ebooks in QMUL Library.
The meetings will be in person. Please contact Catherine Nash if you would like to receive a Teams invite for your calendar or to be added to the Critical Hope Collective network mailing list.
WORKSHOP 1
Hospicing modernity: exploring the work of Vanessa Machado De Oliveira and the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Collective
12 February, 11.00-12.30, The Common Room (Room 118), Department of Geography and Environmental Science, First Floor of the Geography Building
Preparatory reading: Vanessa Machado De Oliveira, 2023, Hospising Modernity: Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism, North Atlantic Books, Berkeley California, Preface and Part 1, (pp. xiii-61) & Chapter 10 (pp. 233-249).
You may also be interested in having a look at the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Collective website: https://decolonialfutures.net/
WORKSHOP 2
Imagination: A manifesto, imagining worlds otherwise through the work of Ruha Benjamin
12 March, 10.00-11.30, The Sofa Room in Dept W.
Preparatory reading: Ruha Benjamin, 2024, Imagination: A manifesto, W.W. Norton and Company, New York, Introduction and Chapter 1 (pp. 1-28) and Chapters 5 and 6 (pp. 91-135)
WORKSHOP 3
Abolition: engaging with abolition and feminism through the work of Angela Y. Davis, Erica Meiners, Beth Richie, Gina Dent
16 April, 11.00-12.30, The Common Room (Room 118), Department of Geography and Environmental Science, First Floor of the Geography Building
Preparatory reading: Angela Y. Davis, Erica Meiners, Beth Richie, Gina Dent, 2022, Abolition, Feminism, Now, Penguin, London, Preface, Introduction & Chapter 1 (pp. vii-78)
We look forward to our discussions.
The online reading meetings take place on the last Thursday of the month at 1pm online. If you would like to join, please email c.nash@qmul.ac.uk.
Past meetings
Pedagogies of possibility: Critical hope in uncertain times on Friday, 20 June 2025 at 10 am.
Totality, Hope and Bloch on 20 March 2025 at 1 pm.
A paradoxical academic identity: fate, utopia and critical hope, 27 February 2025.
Characterizing Hope, Thursday, 30 January 2025.
Hope as refusal: queer, feminist futurity, Friday, 13 December 2024.
Critical hope in difficult times: pedagogic challenges and possibilities, Friday, 18 October 2024,
The cruelty of hope: precarious life and the promise of meritocracy, Friday, 15 November 2024,