Why Inequality Persists - and How We Move Beyond

Joanna Kavenna and Kim Stanley Robinson are in conversation at the Schwarzman Centre on Tuesday 24 November, the signature event of a two-day programme titled Utopian Dreams, Dystopian Realities: Why Inequality Persists. It runs from 23 to 24 November at the Sohmen Concert Hall, with the main session starting at 14:00 on the second day. Kavenna and Robinson will be joined by Jason Hickel and a group of Oxford academics, with Anette Mikes and Venus Bivar facilitating the discussion.

The whole thing is put on by the Oxford Ministry for the Future, an interdisciplinary network of academics, artists and authors set up by Hertford Fellow Anette Mikes and former College Principal Tom Fletcher. Kim Stanley Robinson is one of its participants, and the network was started to bring the humanities into dialogue with science. The programme brings together economists, writers and artists to debate global inequality, radical economics and climate futures, with sessions designed to find intersections between disciplines — post-capitalist futures grounded in Hickel's degrowth theories are one of the examples. After the lectures, there's a video installation by visual artist Maija Tammi to see. The atmosphere spills out into the venue's modern atriums, where people debate policy, philosophy and art over coffee.

If you're following the Ministry's work, this is the big one. It's the headline session of the two-day run, so it's the best place to catch the whole group together in one room. The conversation brings Kavenna and Robinson together with Hickel and the Oxford academics, with Mikes and Bivar keeping things moving. It's on Tuesday 24 November at 14:00 in the Sohmen Concert Hall, part of the wider Utopian Dreams, Dystopian Realities programme running 23-24 November at the Schwarzman Centre.