25 September 2026
Michael Kirby Building
330X Function Room, 17 Wally's Walk (in-person only)
Wallumattagal Campus, Macquarie University
Organiser: Dr Regina Fabry
Contact: regina.fabry@mq.edu.au
In the age of AI technologies, human-made climate change, and the rise of autocratic systems, we urgently need novel solutions to the erosion of our epistemic values and practices, the radical, irreversible changes to our environments, and the threats to our democratic societies. These solutions cannot be developed without imagination, the ability to envision the future and to connect the known to the yet-unknown. We often imagine through narration. By developing, challenging, and transforming narrative modes of imagining, we can discover novel ways of thinking about solutions to pressing problems and challenges. In turn, practices of narrative imagination have strong implications for our well-being, individually and collectively. These practices can help overcome feelings of lacking agency and autonomy in a complex and increasingly opaque world. Yet, the connections between narrative, imagination, and well-being remain currently understudied. This workshop brings together researchers from history, ethnography, philosophy, and creative practice to facilitate an interdisciplinary discourse about narrative and imagination and their impact on individual and collective well-being.
Funded by
Macquarie University Minds and Intelligences Research Centre
Organised
in collaboration with the Imagined Lives Research Hub