Giving a lecture today (20 September) in the Studia Generalia series on utopia and dystopia, Tampere University (in Finnish). I’ve heard more than a hundred students signed up – looking forward to a full house!

My guest lecture will focus on utopia as literary genre and on utopia as method. I’ll be drawing on the work of Caroline Edwards and Ruth Levitas, and on experiences from teaching the course “Hope for the Future” at Turku University a few years back.

We’ll be looking at excerpts from Annika Luther’s City of the Homeless (2011) and Emily St John Mandel’s Station Eleven (2014).

Relevant publications include my articles on “Cities Utopian, Dystopian and Apocalyptic” and the co-authored “Toivoa tulevaisuudesta” (in Finnish).