Thinking about the future from the end

Have we reached the end as a society? Or are we simply experiencing the end of certain worlds, as there have been many? In this event, international researchers from the Käte Hamburger Center for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies (CAPAS) will enter into a dialogue with the audience about past, present and future forms of the apocalypse.

In an interactive format, we want to bring together different perspectives and explore the question of how entire societies, but also each and every individual, deal with experiences and harbingers of collapse. We want to discuss how new forms of coexistence can emerge from expectations and experiences of the end. Because “apocalypse” does not have to mean total annihilation, but can also be a new beginning that opens up possibilities and new perspectives for survival and a better life.

Language: English
Free admission
Registration at events@dai-heidelberg.de

Suzy Kim
Suzy Kim is a historian of North Korea, award-winning author of two seminal books with Cornell University Press, senior editor of positions: asia critique, and a public scholar who actively engages in social justice advocacy with organizations such as Amnesty International and Women Cross DMZ while teaching at Rutgers University.

Sarah Juliet Lauro
Sarah Juliet Lauro is an associate professor at the University of Tampa, internationally renowned for her groundbreaking scholarship on zombies, slavery, and resistance, author and editor of multiple field-defining books, editor of Studies in the Fantastic, and a Fulbright fellow whose current work links the undead to memory, rebellion, and the climate crisis.

Kayvan Tahmasebian
Kayvan Tahmasebian is a writer, translator, and literary theorist, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at SOAS (University of London), former leader of the EU-funded TRANSMODERN project, award-winning PEN translator, and co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Activism.

Robert Folger
Robert Folger is Director of the Käte Hamburger Kolleg for Apocalyptic and Postapocalyptic Studies and Professor of Romance Philology at Heidelberg University, internationally renowned for his research on iberoromantic literatures, Latin American cultures, and cultural theory.

Uzodinma Iweala
Uzodinma Iweala is a writer, filmmaker, and visionary leader who, as CEO of The Africa Center in New York, has revitalized the institution, while also mentoring emerging writers at NYU and shaping global conversations through media, literature, and film.

Marcel Kückelhaus
Marcel Kückelhaus, PhD on the linguistic construction of artificial intelligence, held a research stay at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI), was a fellow of the WissKomm-Kolleg, and now works in the Outreach Team at CAPAS, bridging interdisciplinary research and public engagement.

In cooperation with