Fourth Annual Haunted Futures Conference Held in UCC

30 Sep 2026

Haunted Futures 2026 brought together scholars from a wide array of disciplines responding to hauntology and the theme of 'spaces in crisis'.

The 2026 Haunted Futures Conference, convened by Dr Rachel Gough (Sustainability Institute, Department of Film and Screen Media) and Dr Ellen Scally (Department of Film and Screen Media), took place at University College Cork on 29 and 30 September. Now in its fourth year, the annual interdisciplinary conference brings together a network of scholars to present and discuss work on hauntology, framing the concept as a challenge to dominant capitalist and imperialist relationships with time and history, while imagining radical social change and alternative futures in the Anthropocene.

The theme of this year’s conference was ‘Spaces in Crisis’, which invited delegates to consider the relationship between haunted buildings and environments and their human and non-human histories.

The conference also has a strong creative practice component, with writers, musicians and filmmakers presenting their work.

Across the two-day conference, forty delegates presented their research, while fourteen creative practitioners shared their work. A workshop offering a hauntological response to Ireland’s housing crisis was hosted by Cristina Diamant.

This year’s keynote lecture, entitled ‘Ghosts of London: 1980s Goth, Scala Cinema and the Batcave’, was delivered by Dr Karen Smith. Drawing on archival materials, theoretical responses and lived experience, Smith described how 1980s subcultures offered powerful resistance to gentrification and late-capitalist hegemony.

Haunted Futures will return in 2027.

For more on this story contact:

For more details about Haunted Futures, or to discuss a potential collaboration, email rgough@ucc.ie.