8th Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation with Françoise Vergès: There Will Be No Future Without Seizing the Present

The Stuart Hall Foundation invites you to the inaugural event of their 2025 programme, In Search of Common Ground. We are delighted to welcome political theorist, writer, activist, independent curator and political educator, Françoise Vergès to Conway Hall as the keynote speaker for the 8th Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation.

In Vergés’ keynote, ‘There Will Be No Future Without Seizing the Present’, she will consider how we might think across difference to construct a life-affirming politics in times of poly-crisis, with a presentation organised around possibilities for reappropriating the present:

Imagining a post-racist and post-capitalist future seems impossible when the present is plagued with genocide and imperialist wars; when catastrophic floods, hurricanes and fires engulf our planet; when murderous migration policies and increased poverty further entrenches racism, xenophobia, and misogyny into the fabric of our societies.

Liberating the present from colonisation, racial neoliberal capitalism, and the forces which make our planet uninhabitable for human and nonhuman species alike necessitates orienting our political imaginations towards wholesale revolutionary change; towards the possibility of forging a future in which all life can flourish, in which all life is protected.

Stuart Hall called upon us to embrace “a politics without guarantees”, by which he suggests that we cannot construct a politics simply through denunciation and condemnation. Instead, we ought to produce “new dimensions of meaning which have not been foreclosed by the systems of power which are in operation.”

This is a call for radical imagining and action, for thinking beyond the imperialist post-World War II order.

– Françoise Vergès.

Françoise Vergès’ keynote speech will be followed by a conversation with Mohammed Elnaiem, Director of the Decolonial Centre who will also be chairing the audience Q&A. Guests are warmly invited to gather together in Conway Hall afterwards for an informal reception where complimentary food and drink will be available for all ticket holders.

Age Recommendation:

16+

Price: *All ticket prices below include a £1 booking fee*

In person: Standard £6 • Living Support £4 • Students £4

Online: Standard £3

Access Information

This event is in the Main Hall, which is located on the ground floor.

All the ground-floor rooms are fully accessible by wheelchair. Main Hall (street access, step-free), Brockway Room (street access, step-free), Bertrand Russell Room (street access, shallow ramp). There is also an accessible toilet on the ground floor opposite the Brockway Room.