Dystopia Now

Birkbeck's Centre for Contemporary Literature recently organised a one-day conference titled "Dystopia Now," held at the School of Arts on 26 May 2017. I was really thrilled to be asked to deliver the opening keynote for the conference, alongside Dr Mark Bould who gave the...

2017 or 1984? May18

2017 or 1984?

As part of the Birkbeck Arts Week 2017 programme, I was invited to join my Birkbeck Colleague Dr Ben Worthy and Professor Jean Seaton for a panel discussion about the relevance of Orwell's landmark dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) to our own moment of political...

Zamyatin Panel

The annual conference of the European Utopian Studies Society took place this year at the University of Newcastle. Taking its theme as "The End of the City," the 2015 conference was dedicated to examining the function of the city in contemporary utopian thought. As Yevgeny...