Imagination Research Network

Description

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. The Network is 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 too much else besides. They 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, its 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 on early modern imagination. It has since held annual meetings in May 2025 and May 2026, alongside book symposia.

Associate Members from beyond Queen Mary are welcome. Suggestions for Network events can be sent to the IHSS inbox.

Currently active

Yes

Offers funding

No, this infrastructure does not provide funding.

Founding year

2024

Contact details

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Categorisation

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University affiliation(s)

Queen Mary, University of London
London