Symposium: Contested Futures
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Join us for a two-day symposium on the theme of ‘Contested Futures’.
Across two days, leading scholars and new voices in the field consider how we imagine the future in a time of deepening global conflict and displacement.
Talks explore the futures Shakespeare’s plays open up—and the ones they close down—and how we might challenge inherited ideas about race, power and belonging.
Who gets to hope for a better world? Whose visions of the future will shape reality?
This event is part of the Shakespeare and Race Festival 2026.
DETAILS
Tickets
£10 (attend in person)
£5 (attend online)
Shakespeare’s Globe is a registered charity. Ticket fees contribute to operational costs and support our research events. If cost presents a barrier, please contact [email protected]. We are committed to ensuring these events remain accessible to all.
This event takes place onsite or online.
Running time: 7 hours (10:00-17:00)
Part of the Shakespeare and Race Festival
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SPEAKERS
Friday 16 October
Amrita Dhar: ‘Love’s Labours: Postcolonial Shakespeares’
Kit Heyam: ‘Assigned monster at birth: gendering children and colonial anxiety in and beyond The Tempest’
Iman Sheeha: ‘The Prince of Morocco, Legacies of Orientalism, and More Inclusive Futures’
M. Lindsay Kaplan: ‘The History and Future of Shakespearean Racial Coordinations’
Andrew Bozio: ‘Scenes of Dispossession: Shakespeare and the Aesthetics of Racial Capitalism’
Lucy Munro: ‘Decolonising the Shakespearean Playhouse’
Saturday 17 October
Natalya Din-Kariuki: ‘Shakespearean Travellers and Travellees’
Varsha Panjwani: ‘Re‑Introducing A Midsummer Night’s Dream for a Contested Future’
Murat Öğütcü: ‘Islam and Turkish Shakespeares’
Rachel Breckon: ‘“These should be Carthage walls”: Blue Humanities and the Making of Mixed-Race Identity in Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage and Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra’
Xin Ying Lim: ‘Silenced but Sovereign: Jessica, Pocahontas, and the Colonial Politics of Virtue’
Caminey Kuropatwa: ‘“Marks apparent”: Contesting Racial Binaries through a Lexicon of Mixedness’
Hanh Bui: ‘Racialised Futures: Reproduction and White Optimism’
Arthur L. Little, Jr.: TBC
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