‘Imagining urban futures through speculative fiction’ talk @ The British Academy, London, Jan 17, 2025

A disco ball reflecting blue-ish light

How can a geographical lens support much-needed social change – and how does that relate to literature? When it comes to imagining urban futures, what could we learn and, indeed, unlearn by reading and writing…

Continue Reading

Take root among the stars? Emancipatory homemaking as critical worldbuilding in Octavia Butler’s Parables. Paper in ‘cultural geographies’

Detail of a paperback with colorful bookmarks

In this paper, we explore strategies of emancipatory homemaking in Octavia E. Butler's Earthseed novels. We examine homemaking as a strategy, first, of persistence and, second, of adaptability. This allows us to define the home…

Continue Reading

Holding space for strangeness. In favor of critical utopianism in urban geography. Paper in ‘Geographica Helvetica’

A pile of SFF literature

What could urban geographers continue to learn and unlearn from critical utopianism and emancipatory futurities? In this contribution, I seek to recover transformative academic practices and work towards didactics of speculative estrangement. Specifically, I propose…

Continue Reading

‘Didactics of estrangement through Science Fiction’ paper & ‘Future techniques, protagonists and spaces’ session @ RGS-IBG London, Aug 28 and 29, 2024

At the 2024 RGS-IBG conference in London, I co-hosted a GFGRG and PolGRG sponsored session and presented a paper. Didactics of estrangement through Science Fiction Paper presented by Anke Schwarz Despite the limitations implied by…

Continue Reading