Festival of Social Science and the National launch of UCC’s Collective Social Futures Institute

The Collective Social Futures Institute (CSFI), UCC’s newest Futures Institute, will be officially launched on 23-24 November 2026 during a two-day Festival of Social Science celebrating the role of the social sciences in understanding and shaping our collective futures.

Bringing together researchers, policymakers, community organisations and artists, the festival will showcase how interdisciplinary, socially engaged and creative research can help address some of the most pressing challenges facing society today.

About the Festival of Social Science

This year’s festival begins on Monday 23 November with a book launch and a roundtable discussion with CSFI’s community partners, followed by an evening of socially engaged music and spoken word, celebrating local and international artists and showcasing how social science research can collaborate with the arts to conduct and communicate research on key local and global challenges.

The national launch of the Collective Social Futures Institute will take place during a full-day research symposium on Tuesday 24 November. With contributions from university leadership, invited guests and UCC researchers, the symposium, titled ‘Understanding Crisis, Enacting Change’ will explore the role of social science in understanding societal complexity, envisioning more caring, just and inclusive futures, and supporting social transformation through research, dialogue and collaborations with community partners, stakeholders and policy makers.

Organised around four thematic panels and a roundtable with UCC Futures directors and invited guests, a highlight of the symposium will be a keynote address by Professor Ana Cristina Santos, President of the European Sociological Association.

Building on the success of UCC's annual Festival of Social Science, now in its fourth year, the launch event reflects CSFI's commitment to bringing rigorous social scientific research into dialogue with communities, policymakers and creative practitioners. It celebrates research that is ambitious, collaborative and publicly engaged, while demonstrating the vital contribution of the social sciences to creating more just, democratic and sustainable futures.

The launch offers an opportunity to join a growing national and international community committed to understanding, imagining and enacting collective social futures.

Register at the following link: Festival of Social Science & National Launch of CSFI Places are limited so early registration is recommended.

Festival Programme

Festival of Social Science and the National launch of UCC’s Collective Social Futures Institute

University College Cork, 23-24 November 2026

Day 1: Monday, 23 November

CACSSS Seminar Room, O’Rahilly Building | 14:30 p.m. - 17:00 p.m.

14:30 - 15:30  Book Lauch and In-Conversation

• Welcome: Professor Stephen Graham, Head of the College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences and Dr Siobhan Cusack, Director of Research Strategy & Projects, OVPRI.
• Book Launch: Professor Lyn Innes, Fugitive Families: Making Black Lives Matter in Victorian Britain (Lutterworth Press, 2005)
• Black Abolitionists in Ireland: Affiliations, Interactions and Postcolonial Futures. Lyn Innes, Emeritus Professor of Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Kent in conversation with Dr Bahriye Kemal and Professor Lee Jenkins, School of English and Digital Humanities
• Refreshments

16:00 - 17:00 ‘Nothing about us without us': The Ethics of Collaborative Practice        

Professor Maggie O’Neill, Director of the Collective Social Futures Institute will chair a roundtable discussion with some of the institute’s community partners (Naomi Masheti, Cork Migrant Centre; Sheila Connolly, Cork Alliance; Eileen O’Shea, TVG; Rachel Iredale Research Ireland; James Leonard, Cork Learning City; and Ian Hughes, DSIS). 

Day 1: Monday, 23 November

The Shtepps, The Hub, UCC | 18.00 p.m. - 20:00 p.m. with refreshments from 17.30 p.m.

On Monday 23 November, the Collective Social Futures Institute will host an evening of socially-engaged music and the spoken word that address important social science themes.  This event will celebrate local artists, musicians and poets and showcase how social science research can collaborate with the arts to conduct, connect and communicate research on key local and global challenges.

18:00 - 18:30  Welcome and Opening Address

• Welcome: Professor Maggie O’Neill, Director, Collective Social Futures Institute
• Opening Address: : Professor John O’Halloran,  President, UCC

18:30 – 20:00 Socially-engaged Music and Spoken Word

• Rosie McCarthy – Traveller, Singer, Actor, Student
• Bahriye Kemal and the Syrian women poet's project
• Citadel - World music

Find out more here

Day 2: Tuesday, 24 November

Dora Allman Room, The Hub, UCC | 9:00 a.m.  - 17:00 p.m. with refreshments and registration from 9:00 a.m.

On Tuesday 24 November, the Collective Social Futures Institute will be formally launched as part of a full-day research symposium titled ‘Understanding Crisis, Enacting Change’. 

09:30 - 10:00:  National Launch of the Collective Social Futures Institute

• With a welcome by Professor Maggie O’Neill, Director, Collective Social Futures Institute, and opening address by Professor John Cryan, Vice-President Research and Innovation, UCC

10:00 - 10:55 Panel 1: Understanding the Challenges and Possibilities of Democratic Futures

• Dr Sinan Richards: Report on "The Epidemiological Turn: Critical Approaches to Conspiracy Theory and Mis/Disinformation Discourse"
• Dr Fiona Buckley: Violence against politicians in Ireland: what does it look like and how is it gendered?
• Dr Yasmine Ahmed, Dr Gema Kloppe-Santamaría and Dr Evelien Geerts: Thinking-with Memes: Digital Visual Culture & the Far-Right

Professor Máiréad Dunne 

Short Coffee Break 

11:10-12:05 Roundtable Discussion: Understanding Poly Crisis, Enacting Change

Chaired by Professor John Cryan, with contributions from invited guests and UCC Futures Directors, the discussion will consider the role of interdisciplinary research in addressing societal challenges and opportunities, and how universities, funders, policymakers and communities can work together to maximise research impact.

12:05 - 13:00 Panel 2:  Understanding Climate Realities and Futures

• Dr Camila Tavares Pereira: Reimagining collective urban futures through South-South knowledge exchanges: contributions from Brazil and Mozambique
• Professor Edmond Byrne: Climate Realities and Futures (some ‘Deep Societal Innovation for Sustainability and Human Flourishing’ perspectives)
• Jeanette Fitzsimons & Dr Monica O’Mullane: Healthy place-making: The value and challenges of advancing health through urban planning and design                                                     

13:00 - 13:45  Lunch

13:45 - 14:35 Keynote Address       

Professor Ana Cristina Santos, University of Coimbra, Portugal, President of the European Sociological Association (ESA) 

Title - Old, loud and proud: queer biographical narratives as living archives against erasure

Short Break 

14:50 - 15:45 Panel 3 Envisioning:  Caring and Inclusive Societal Relations   

• Dr Calvin Swords: In Our Own Words: Lived Experiences of Employment and Social Inclusion Among People with Mental Health Challenges
• Dr Carol Power: Organisational democracy, social dialogue and job quality in the social economy
• Dr Patricia Kennedy: Human Rights at Sea: Universal Health Coverage (UHC), 'seafarers' as 'persons'

Chair: Dr Siobhan O'Sullivan, School of Applied Social Studies.

15:45 -16:55 Panel 4 Enacting: Leave no-one behind: Creative Approaches to Migrant and refugee inclusion and support    

• Dr Catherine Forde and Dr Vanessa Liston: INSPIRE Intersectional Spaces of Participation: Inclusive, Resilient, Embedded
• Dr Angela Veale & Dr Fionnuala Larkin: Co-creating research-based interventions with migrant mothers
• Dr Bahriye Kemal: Syrian Women Writing-Wandering the Partitioned Mediterraneans: Displacement, Staying, Returning and the Making of Postcolonial Futures
• Dr Pooya Ghoddousi and Dr Mastoureh Fathi: Digital Precarity and the Making of Home: Migrant Connectivity and Belonging in Ireland and Türkiye

Chair: Dr Angela Flynn, School of Nursing and Midwifery

16:55-17:00 Closing remarks, Professor Maggie O'Neill 

Day 2: Tuesday, 24 November 

Dora Allman Room, The Hub, UCC | 5:30 - 7:30pm

• Book Launch: Sinan Richards and Derek Hook, Fanon and Lacan: Decolonial Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2026)
• Public Lecture: Professor Derek Hook, Duquesne University, University of Pretoria: Lessons from Fanon

Abstracts and Speakers’ Biographies available here