Not Another Crisis! Knowledge in and beyond disciplines
Summary of the day
The Society and Culture Spotlight organised an end-of-year day-long Symposium on June 23, 2026, on its annual theme of the knowledge crisis. Entitled Not Another Crisis! Knowledge in and beyond Disciplines, the all-day Symposium brought together academics from across various disciplines at Warwick and beyond. These included colleagues from the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, English and Comparative Literature, History, Law, Politics, Sociology, and Theatre and Performance Studies. External presenters included speakers from Goldsmiths, Coventry University and the Independent Social Research Foundation.
The day opened with a visit to the Creative Corner room where colleagues from Theatre and Performance--Nadine Holdsworth, Saul Hewish and Bobby Smith, as well as Siddharth de Souza from CIM and Rachel Turner-King from Creativity, Performance and Education鈥攑resented games, installations and film to highlight different zones of crisis such as the Indian Parliament, the city of Coventry, and the justice system.
The day was then divided into three inter-linked segments, with each taking up a sub-theme of the Symposium. Prof. Christopher Newfield, one of the leading scholars of the neoliberal turn in universities, delivered a powerful keynote on Crisis of the University. Dr. Nicholas Lawrence from ECLS chaired the session and Prof. Hannah Jones from Sociology and Dr. Roxanne Douglas from the IAS were the respondents who highlighted spaces of resistance from within the university and the challenge of supporting Palestinian universities and scholars from outside Palestine. Chaired by Dr. Catalina Neculai from Coventry University, the second session was focused on the Crisis in and of the Disciplines. Prof. Stuart Elden of PAIS gave a magisterial talk on the crisis of territoriality as a critical concept within political studies. Prof. Sharifah Sekalala from Law and Prof. Noortje Marres from CIM responded by pointing to crises within global health and science studies. The final session was entitled Crisis of Worlding. Prof. Graeme Macdonald gave a riveting keynote talk on fire, fossil fuels, climate crisis and art. Prof. Nirmal Puwar from Goldsmiths chaired the session and Dr. Tom Simpson from History and Kalrav Vashishtha, a PhD student from English, ably responded by talking about climate and the environment in history and literature.
All of the sessions were ably transcribed by Nifty Fox, while the fabulous engagement of the participants remained the highlight of the event. The heatwave outside underscored the very idea of crisis, but the Symposium created a space to understand it and respond to it.
Creative responses to crisis
Responses to crisis
