Rethinking Humanism Conference

Colonial Histories, Critical Futures

Date/time:

Monday 28 September 2026 9:00am to 5:00pm

Location:

Selwyn College

About

Humanism has long functioned as a deeply contested framework in social thought and practice. Historically entangled with Enlightenment universalism, dominant western colonial humanism has justified imperial expansion, domination, and subjugation. Critiques emerging from anti-colonial, feminist, Indigenous, Black, Marxist, and post-humanist traditions, have exposed these exclusions and violences, while simultaneously generating emancipatory thought, political practice, and urgent questions about whether, and how, humanism can be rethought.

This event brings together contributions that critically engage with the past, present, and possible futures of humanism.

Register to attend by emailing Iris Pissaride at rethinkinghumanism@gmail.com. This is an in-person only event. Spaces are limited and lunch will be provided. Please only register if you are fully committed to attending so we can manage capacity and avoid food waste.

 

Programme

09:00 - 9:30 - Registration and Welcome

09:30 - 10:30 - Unsettling Colonial Ontologies

  • Suzanne Césaire’s plant-human.
    Sara Kok, University of Bern
  • Species Humanization through Autopoiesis: Césaire, Fanon, Wynter.
    Dr Jackqueline Frost, University of London Institute in Paris
  • Panel Discussion

10:30 - 10:45 - Break

10:45 -12:00 - Humanitarianism & Border Regimes

  • Making Colonisation Humanitarian: A Genealogy of Settler Humanitarianism in Palestine/Israel.
    Dr Pietro Stefanini, University of Edinburgh
  • (De)bording the Human.
    Dr rémy-paulin twahirwa, Aston University
  • Rethinking the humanisation of refugees
    Dr Moé Suzuki
  • Panel Discussion

12:00 - 13:30 - Lunch

13:30 - 14:30 - Global Scales & Current Conjectures

  • Rethinking the Politics of Humanism
    Dr Ayça Çubukçu, LSE
  • Humanism in the age of the Anthropocene.
    Prof. Peter Wagner, ICREA, University of Barcelona
  • Panel Discussion

14:30 - 14:45 Break

14:45- 16:00 - Marxist Anticolonial Humanists

  • From chauvinism to mass work: Claudia Jones’s humanism from below.
    Dr Joe P. L. Davidson, Loughborough University
  • Sensing the Human: Amílcar Cabral, Humanist Marxism, and the Sensorium of Anti-Colonial Resistance.
    Dr Filipe Carreira da Silva, University of Cambridge
  • Merleau-Ponty's Anticolonial Humanism.
    Dr Philippe Le Goff, University of Warwick
  • Panel Discussion

16:00 - 17:00 Closing Remarks and Socialising