What if there was a Research Network on Imagination? Can you picture, in your mind’s eye, such a group? If only it were possible to hypothesise such a non-utilitarian, long-term, friendship-based and friendship-generating, exploratory space for discussing all things imagination, past, present, and future!
Welcome to the website of the Imagination Research Network at QMUL. We are a varied bunch, with scholars coming from all disciplines – and including the humanities and social sciences, as well as the sciences – interested in conversations about imagination, including its connections to media, form, and technology; to emotion, politics, and ideology; to surveillance, fantasy, and placebo; to deception, pretence, and the counterfactual; to fiction, the future, and play; to belief, sympathy, and creativity; to speculation, utopia, and dreaming; to memory, narrative, and social change; and to much else besides. We are especially keen to think about imagination across time – from Ancient History to Sci-Fi Futures – and across space, and thus in many different places and traditions. Within QMUL, our Members come from the School of History, Law, Arts, Economics and Finance, Politics and International Relations, and more.
The Network was launched on 20 May 2024, with ‘Imagination Day’ – a whole-day discussion of two recent books: Professor Lorna Hutson’s (Oxford) England’s Insular Imagining (2023) and Professor Helen Hackett’s (UCL) The Elizabethan Mind (2022). We are currently planning ‘Imagination Days 2’, scheduled for 20-21 May 2025, with two days of exciting workshops and book discussions.
We also welcome suggestions for Network events. Please contact the Convenor of the Network, Professor Maks Del Mar.
We welcome members from QMUL as well as Associate Members from beyond. To join the Network, please contact us at ihss@qmul.ac.uk with your name, School (within QMUL, or affiliation), and a brief description of your research interests.