Nurturing Hope Conference: May 8th-9th, 2025

Nurturing Hope:

Liberal Education, Democracy, and Designing Sustainable Futures

May 8th-9th, 2025

Ramphal Building 0.12 and Online

What is the relevance of Liberal Arts education for the challenges we face in the twenty-first century?

How can the critical tradition of Liberal Education nurture hope and foster democratic values?

Can Liberal Arts Education lead us to designing better and more sustainable futures for ourselves, our loved ones, and our communities?

These questions (and more) are at the heart of what this conference seeks to explore.   As Jessica Riddell writes, the Liberal Arts can "help us metabolize despair, imagine what is possible, and create new ways of being in the world." The rise of Liberal Arts programmes in the Netherlands, in Germany, and the UK over the past two decades are a testament to the value of this form of education in increasingly uncertain times.   Through interdisciplinary talks, panel discussions, and engaging workshops, this conference will explore the value of Liberal Arts education today, its critical link with democratic values, and consider how this approach to learning can help us foster hope within ourselves, our communities, our institutions, and our world. Liberal Arts education has always been interlaced with hope: hope for a more expansive present; hope for a deeper understanding of ourselves; hope for a richer appreciation of the past; and hope in our human abilities to creatively craft more hope-full futures.

As Warwick's Liberal Arts programme moves into its tenth year in 2026, and the University celebrates its 60th anniversary in 2025, this conference seeks to spark thoughtful conversations around the role of Liberal Education today, both in the United Kingdom and around the world. In doing so, it aims to revisit and further the vision of Warwick’s foundational alliance, who firmly believed that the idea of a holistic liberal arts education should sit at the core of the University’s broader educational mission (as described by Patel 2023).

The conference will feature talks from international speakers, experts in Liberal Arts education, Warwick staff and students, and members of the UK SLAE network (Society for Liberal Arts Education). Through our discussions we hope to shed light on different approaches to the Liberal Arts today, while also highlighting the innovative and unique aspects of this centuries-old, interdisciplinary, civic-minded tradition in which true human flourishing is made possible through the nurturing of hope itself.

Programme- May 8th

Morning Sessions

9:15 AM - 9:45 AM: Registration and Welcome Coffee

9:45 AM -10:15 AM: Opening Remarks

Prof. Rachel Moseley – Vice-Provost/Chair – Warwick Faculty of Arts

Dr. Jane Webb – Head of School – Cross-Faculty Studies

Dr. Bryan Brazeau – Head of Liberal Arts - Warwick

Dr. Lauren Bird – Director of Admissions – Liberal Arts - Warwick

10:15 AM- 11:00 AM – Keynote 1

Josh Patel (Edge Foundation) - Warwick and the Transformation of Liberal Education: The role of Universities from Social Democracy to Neoliberalism

11:00 AM - 11:15 AM: Coffee Break

11:15 AM - 12:15 PM: Session 1 – UK Contexts of Liberal Education

William Rupp (Warwick Liberal Arts) and Simon Scott (Liberal Arts Birmingham) - Collaboration and Network-Building: Liberal Education in the UK Today

12:15-1:15 P.M.: Session 2 – Resilience and Hope: from Community to Policy

Elena Korostoleva (Warwick Institute for Global Sustainable Development) - Complexity and Community: Nurturing Resilience in Central Eurasia

Stuart Kirk (The Schumacher Institute) - Are you Hopeful? - Tales from the Science to Policy Interface

13:15 PM - 2:00 PM: Lunch Break

Afternoon Sessions

2:00 PM – 2:45 PM: Keynote 2

Milan Kovačevič (Maastricht University) — Crossing Borders of Employability: The Career Preparedness of Dutch Liberal Arts Graduates.

2:45 – 4:00 PM: Session 3 – Student Approaches to Nurturing Hope

Olivia Brown, Esme Hide, and Dae Pomeroy (Warwick Liberal Arts) – Hortus Incrementum: Reinventing Liberal Education

Joey Kay (Warwick Global Sustainable Development) – Beyond EcoAnxiety: Finding Hope in the Metacrisis

Zeeshan Yousuf, Alice Trump, Nikita Nagda & Megan Carolan (Warwick Design Studies)– Designing Hope: Challenging the Design Mindset for Sustainable Development

4:00 PM – 4:15 PM: Coffee Break

4:15-5:15 PM: Keynote 3

Jessica Riddell (Bishops University) — How to Human: The Power of Liberal Arts in an AI Future

5:15- 5:30 – Closing Remarks

An optional dinner will be organised for in-person participants (at their own expense).

Programme- May 9th

Morning Sessions

9:00 AM — 9:30 AM: Welcome Coffee

9:30 AM – 11:00 AM: Session 4 – European Contexts of Liberal Education

Andrew Brogan (Leuphana University) – An Anarchic Celebration of the Liberal Arts

Teun Dekker (University College Maastricht) – Liberal Arts as Education for the 22nd Century

Veronica Bremner (Leuphana University) – Discussing Failure: Insights from the Liberal Arts 'Planning, Decision-Making, and Reflection' Course.

11:00-11:15 – Coffee Break

11:15-12:15 – Session 5 – Global Contexts of Liberal Education

Anthony Kolusanya (Osun University, Nigeria) – Balancing Religious Values in the Academy: The Challenge of Liberal Education for a Sustainable Future in Nigeria.

Jarrett Carty (Concordia University, Montréal) – Concordia's Liberal Arts College and the Canadian Context

12:15-12:45 PM– Closing Comments

Dr. Lauren Bird and Dr. Bryan Brazeau (Warwick Liberal Arts)

12:30 – 2:00 PM – Closing Lunch and Networking

Speaker Bios Logistics and Location

All conference sessions will take place in room 0.12 in the Ramphal building, located on Library Road, on the University of Warwick campus in Coventry (CV4 7AL). You can get directions to this space by clicking here to go to the interactive campus map. The building can also be found on Google Maps at the this link.

A map with the Ramphal building highlighted

Accommodation

We do not have reserved rooms for this conference, but if you would like to stay on/near campus, we suggest contacting Warwick Conferences who offer B&B rates for overnight stays in their facilities on campus. You can find out more about their offer by clicking here.

Access Information

If you have particular access needs not addressed here feel free to email us directly to discuss these.

The conference is mostly taking place on the ground floor. There is lift access to all floors. We have confirmed there is no scheduled lift maintenance happening during the conference.
The main toilets for the conference are on the first floor. These include gendered bathrooms with multiple stalls in each, as well as two accessible toilets. If you would prefer a non gender specific bathroom then the accessible toilets on the second and third floor of Ramphal are routinely used by people of any gender. You will also find an additional women's bathroom on the second floor and an additional men's bathroom on the third floor - all directly opposite the lifts.
The day is scheduled to have regular breaks throughout, but if you need to take a break at a different time please feel able to leave sessions as suits your needs.
We will ask Warwick Conferences to provide a variety of options for lunch, but if you have specific dietary requests due to allergies, please email us and we can request specific meals.

About the School for Cross Faculty Studies

Established in 2016, the School for Cross-faculty Studies forms part of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Warwick. The School consists of four divisions:

SCFS focusses on inter- and transdisciplinary teaching and research within a collegial atmosphere where colleagues and students work together to think critically and in new ways about global challenges. We continually interrogate the boundaries of disciplinary thinking and the sites of knowledge construction to deconstruct existing practices while rebuilding new futures together.

SCFS is home to the University of Warwick’s increasing range of exciting transdisciplinary programmes, including:

For any questions, please contact the conference's co-organisers: Dr. Lauren BirdLink opens in a new window and Dr. Bryan BrazeauLink opens in a new window.