Anna Foka: “Human Futures, Machine Pasts: Rethinking AI through Cultural Memory and Imagination”
- Date
- 27 May 2026, 10:15
- Location
- SCAS, the Thunberg Lecture Hall
- Type
- Lecture
- Web page
- https://www.swedishcollegium.se/
- Organiser
- Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS)
- Contact person
- Ellen Werner
Anna Foka, Professor of Digital Humanities, Uppsala University, will give a lecture on the topic “Human Futures, Machine Pasts: Rethinking AI through Cultural Memory and Imagination”. The lecture will also be available on Zoom. Pre-registration for the physical event is required by 25 May 2026 at the latest. No registration needed for Zoom. Visit the website to register for the event, and for further details including the Zoom link.
The Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS) and the Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program – Humanity and Society (WASP-HS) are together launching a new international research initiative, Human Futures – AI Transitions in a Global Context, carried out in collaboration with Tokyo College (Japan) and the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS, South Africa). This open keynote lecture is part of the first workshop in a series of three workshops within this initiative.
ABSTRACT:
The opening keynote explores how artificial intelligence is reshaping not only the way societies imagine the future but also how we understand the past and define humanity itself. Drawing from cultural heritage, digital humanities, and critical AI studies, it argues that the technologies driving automation and prediction are deeply entangled with inherited cultural narratives, biases, and epistemologies. By tracing the historical continuities between past imaginaries of intelligence and today’s algorithmic systems, the lecture highlights the need for interdisciplinary approaches that foreground ethics, creativity, and global diversity. Ultimately, it asks how the humanities can help us reclaim agency and meaning in an increasingly automated world—turning AI from an object of control into a shared space of interpretation and reflection.
