Theory, Culture & Society Events

Keynote speakers, Achille Mbembe and Bernard Stiegler, in conversation at the 2019 TCS-APL-AAU Conference, Klagenfurt, Austria.

We regularly organise conferences, colloquia, research seminars and workshops around the world, as well as visiting speaker programmes at Goldsmiths, University London.

The major research concern of Theory, Culture & Society at the moment is the New Encyclopaedia Project, a project on Global Knowledge, in which a group of TCS editors are working with a group of scholars from Japan and other countries to explore the problems of the de-classification and re-classification of knowledge in the wake of globalization and digitalization. A series of colloquia and workshops have been held at Hitotsubashi University in June 2001; Cambridge University in July 2001 (jointly organized with CRASSH, Cambridge Humanities Research Centre); Nottingham Trent University in August 2002; Kobe University in October 2002; Nottingham Trent University in August 2003; Tokyo University, Yonsei University, Korea University, Seoul National and Kyoto Bukkyo University in October 2003; Singapore in April 2004, December 2004 and March 2005; London in February 2005; and Tokyo in July 2005. A Theory, Culture & Society special issue on Problematizing Global Knowledge was published in 2006 to launch the project. Other research interests include: consumer culture, technological culture, images of ageing, alternative and complimentary medicine, global public life, diasporas  and postcolonialism.

TCS has also organized and co-organized a number of conferences: ‘Body Modification’, June 1997; ‘Information Technology in the University’ in June 1998 (supported by EC ALFA funding) – additional conferences were held in Barcelona, Montevideo and São Paulo in 1999 (co-organized with Caio Dantas, University of São Paulo); ‘The Future of Political Culture’ (a conference sponsored by the Anglo-German Foundation), Goldsmiths College, London University (co-organised with S. Lash and H. Schwengel), May 1999; ‘Inhabiting Technology’ held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London in March 2000 (co-organized with Scott Lash); ‘Cosmopolis; Democratizing Global Economy and Culture Conference’, held in Helsinki in June 2000 (co organized with the University of Helsinki).

To celebrate the journal’s 25th Anniversary, the Conference on ‘Ubiquitous Media’ was held in July 2007 at Tokyo University (planned with Scott Lash and Shunya Yoshimi). In September 2012, we organized a workshop on ‘property’ at the Università degli Studi di Napoli ‘L’Orientale’.

In 2019, we co-organized the 'Truth, Fiction, Illusion: Worlds & Experience' conference with the Association for Philosophy and Literature (formerly IAPL) and Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria. Watch all keynote videos here.