Foresight Conference 2017

Foresight Conference 2017

Foresight Conference 2017, held on 20-21 July, examined issues of identity and aspirations. We looked at how forces from technology, to our work, to our values and beliefs, to our ethnicities and cultures, shape how we see ourselves and what we hope for.

Participants included:

• Kwame Anthony Appiah, Professor of Philosophy at New York University, who has written extensively about identities, including his latest short book Mistaken Identities, based on his 2016 Reith lectures for the BBC.

• Catherine Fieschi, Executive Director of Counterpoint, a London-based think-tank that does multidisciplinary analysis of social and cultural dynamics

• Thomas Philbeck, who leads the World Economic Forum’s project on the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the intersection with society, business and philosophy.

• Marina Oshana, Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Davis, who works on the nature of personal autonomy, the meaning of moral responsibility, and the nature of self and self-identity

• Ebrahim Moosa, Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Notre Dame, who has studied contemporary Islamic thought and the intersection of religious traditions with modernity.

• Philip Jenkins, Professor of History at Baylor University, whose research includes the study of global Christianity, and new and emerging religious movements.

• Linda Woodhead, Director of the Institute of Social Futures, Lancaster University, whose field of study has been the empirical study of culture, religion and values.

• Nick Yee, author of The Proteus Paradox, who has studied how people see themselves in the virtual world, and how that affects how they see themselves in reality.

• Richard McKinnon, founder of BorgFest (a festival for “cyborgs”) and an activist for cyborg rights.

• Rohan Mukherjee, Associate Professor at Yale-National University of Singapore, who has worked on nationalism in India and its interaction with political goals, as well as the intersection of identity politics and foreign policy.

• Mathew Mathews, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies who examines issues around societal cohesion.