Horizons Institute events

This page lists events hosted by the Horizons Institute and members of the research community. All events are open to anyone with an interest in the subject area.

Polycrisis Network seed funding event

Tuesday 20 May, 12.30 – 1.30pm, Fine Art Building SR 2.09

The Polycrisis Network will shortly be putting out a call for applications to the Polycrisis Network for seed funding (£200-£2,500 per project) on research related to our network theme. To support new collaborations for this funding call, the network leads are hosting this networking and research development lunch.

The event will be informal – come, have lunch and meet others who are looking to develop research partnerships across the university related to different aspects of the theme of polycrisis.

To help encourage conversation there will be specific discussion areas you can join. These broad themes have been developed after reviewing feedback from the membership forms on members’ interests and are:

• Understanding polycrisis: its meanings, interactions with complexity (eg health, trade), responses and critiques
• Geopolitics, conflict, post-conflict and security
• Society and culture: vulnerability, marginality and community
• Ecology, sustainability and biodiversity

Please do also come if you don’t see your work directly reflected here. These are broad and crosscutting themes whose purpose is just to help shape conversation at the event. You will also be able to join more than one of the conversations during the session and there is a hope the event will feed into future development of the network.

You do not need to attend the event to apply for the seed funding.

Remaking Places: Sustaining Community Cultural Practices Discussion

Tuesday 20 May, 1 – 3pm, Blenheim Terrace.

Join Dr Alex De Little for a conversation on Culture and Place, exploring the role of community cultural practitioners as researchers and how cultural co-production fosters reflexive, place-based practices.

This is part of a series of gatherings that will be opportunities to share ideas, encounter new ways of approaching interdisciplinary topics and make connections.

Insight Series: Authoring as a collective

Wednesday 21 May, 12 to 1pm, Online (Teams)

Join the members of the team behind Changing the Story as they share their insights from co-authoring their book, Youth Voice and Participatory Arts in Global Development. In this session, co-hosted by the Research Culture team, they will explore what they learnt from the process of authoring as a collective, and how they approached the challenges of working in this way.

Polycrisis seminar: Cultural production and the crisis of consciousness

Thursday 29 May, 12 – 1pm, Baines Wing 2.16 and online (MS Teams)

In this seminar Dr Sarah Jilani will explore the enduring impact of the unfinished project of decolonisation on political consciousness. Drawing on thinkers like Frantz Fanon and Aimé Césaire, the session will ask how today's media landscapes fill the void left by the failure to transform mass consciousness at a global scale.

Participants will consider the role of storytelling in countering the psychic effects – fear, nostalgia, inferiority, emasculation, misdirected anger – of interconnected crises, focusing especially on African and Arab examples of "consciousness-raising" film and literature. How can cultural production help foster political consciousness in our era of obfuscating, inflammatory and othering messaging?

The talk will be followed by a Q&A session.

Remaking Places: Doughnut Economics Sandpit

Tuesday 3 June, 1 – 3pm, Blenheim Terrace

Calling all researchers interested in Doughnut Economics! Come and engage with the Leeds Doughnut Coalition and explore exciting collaborative opportunities to help make Leeds a city where people and planet thrive.

This is part of a series of gatherings that will be opportunities to share ideas, encounter new ways of approaching interdisciplinary topics and make connections.

Remaking Places: Alco-tourism Sandpit

Tuesday 10 June, 1 – 3pm, Blenheim Terrace

With questions proposed by Dr Anna Douglas, this event examines the impact of party tourism, crowd behaviour and nighttime economies on neighbourhoods.

This is part of a series of gatherings that will be opportunities to share ideas, encounter new ways of approaching interdisciplinary topics and make connections.

UKIEG Conference

Thursday 19 June, 9am to 5.30pm, Maurice Keyworth Building G.02

The Healthy Buildings Network will be hosting this year’s UKIEG conference on the University of Leeds campus. 

This event will spotlight cutting edge studies, case examples and forward thinking solutions that address pressing public health and environmental challenges in buildings. It will also provide opportunities to network with experts across disciplines and to explore how we can champion wellbeing in the built environment.

Submission for abstracts is open until 14 April 2025. Authors will be notified of acceptance by the beginning of May 2025. 

MagInBio Conference

Tuesday 1 July to Wednesday 2 July, 9am to 5pm, Nexus Building and online

The MagInBio conference will bring researchers from across the UK and beyond together to discuss diverse projects and ideas connected to Magnetism in Biomaterials, with facilitated collaboration events to prompt new discussions and help attendees target appropriate funding.

Join us at the University of Leeds for a unique opportunity to showcase your research to a diverse and engaged audience, with the chance to develop new collaborations and projects.

Confirmed Speakers:

• Prof Valerie Voon. Cambridge department of Psychiatry.
• Prof Neil Telling. Keele University Biomedical Nanophysics.

We are inviting abstract submissions for poster presentations: Submit an abstract for the MagInBio Conference (MS Forms).