Arts and Humanities Futures Studies:
An Exploratory Symposium

Thursday, Oct. 15, 2026 | the Great Hall, UC San Diego

Registration Now Open

The Arts and Humanities Futures Studies Exploratory Symposium will bring together faculty and invited experts to consider how artistic and humanistic inquiry can help society navigate long-term technological, political, environmental and cultural change. Drawing on history, philosophy, literature, the visual and performing arts, and ethics, the symposium will explore how understanding the past and critically examining the present can expand our capacity beyond just what is probable, but to imagine possible, preferable, and more humane futures.

The symposium will introduce participants to the interdisciplinary field of Futures Studies and approaches including foresight and backcasting, scenario development, systems thinking, and speculative inquiry. Rather than attempting to predict a single future, Futures Studies considers multiple trajectories and asks fundamental questions about the choices, values, institutions and ideas that shape them.

Through presentations, interdisciplinary conversations, and collaborative working sessions, participants will examine the future of democracy and civic life; artificial intelligence and the human consequences of emerging technologies; ethics, rights, and human agency; climate and environmental change; culture, creativity, and storytelling; and the changing nature of work, education, relationships, and meaningful lives.

Together, these subjects invite a larger question: How can the arts and humanities help society envision — and work toward — futures in which people and communities can flourish?

The symposium is exploratory by design. It will showcase existing faculty inquiry and creative practice, develop new connections across disciplines, and invite participants to help define the intellectual priorities and appropriate structure of a broader Arts and Humanities Futures Studies Initiative at UC San Diego. Possibilities emerging from this exploration may include interdisciplinary research collaborations, creative projects, public and community programming, international partnerships, student-learning opportunities, and new avenues for external research support.

At its center is a fundamental proposition: the future is not solely a technological question. It is also a historical, ethical, cultural and imaginative one — and the arts and humanities are essential not only to understanding what may lie ahead, but to asking what kinds of futures we should seek to create.

Registration Now Open

Attendance is free, and registration is required. Register for all day, morning session only, or afternoon session only. Participation is welcome for any or all sessions.

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Acknowledgements

Supported by a UC San Diego Convene and Influence Award from the Office of Research and Innovation, the Arts and Humanities Futures Studies Exploratory Symposium is designed to catalyze interdisciplinary exchange, connect faculty expertise and help shape a shared agenda for future research, creative activity, teaching and public engagement.

The convening series is led by Cristina Della Coletta, dean of the School of Arts and Humanities, whose scholarship spans historical narrative, film, cultural studies and technology in the humanities, and Jac Jemc, a teaching professor in the Department of Literature, Guggenheim Fellow, acclaimed fiction writer, and faculty director of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, whose work encompasses speculative and historical fiction, narrative experimentation and creative approaches to imagining possible worlds