Lecture | LUCIS Meets | Masterclass
Towards a Muslim Futurist Movement: On the Power of Imagining, Space Building, and Community
- Ouassima Laabich
- Date
- Monday 15 April 2024
- Time
- Location
-
Gravensteen
Pieterskerkhof 6
2311 SR Leiden - Room
- 1.11
LUCIS Meets… Ouassima Laabich, project lead of Berlin-based Superrr Lab, who researches Muslim youth and empowerment through an interdisciplinary approach, focusing on critical futures thinking, digitalization, archiving, and the arts. Laabich has worked particularly on Muslim Futures, a decolonial enterprise characterized by what she dubs radical praxis of imagination. She creates spaces for Muslims (and Muslim artists in particular) to envision futures that inspire calls to action, “challenging experiences of the now to imagine a tomorrow that is more just, inclusive, and empowering.”
In this session of LUCIS Meets…, Ouassima Laabich will talk to Yasmin Ismail (LUCIS) about her work, the radicality of imagination, and the importance of community outreach within a European context.
This event is co-organized with the Institute for Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology.
LUCIS Meets… is a forum for the LUCIS community to exchange ideas and experiences with thinkers and practitioners in broader society engaged in relevant projects. The guests may range from artists and museum curators to journalists and NGO workers. The encounters broaden the LUCIS perspective to themes not yet represented in scholarly concerns.
About Ouassima Laabich
Ouassima Laabich is the initiator and project lead of Muslim Futures at Superrr Lab. Muslim Futures combines (critical) futurology, arts, digitalization, and radical imagination to envision more just futures. Laabich is also a PhD candidate in Political Science at the Freie Universität Berlin and a fellow and visiting researcher at Yale University. She studied Public Policy at the Hertie School Berlin and the American University of Beirut, and Middle Eastern Politics in Marburg and Amman.
She has lectured in Nijmegen, Kuala Lumpur, and Cape Town. Her work focuses on empowerment strategies, security discourses, disruptive practices, and critical Muslim studies.
Masterclass with Ouassima Laabich: What If and Why Not? Examining Politics of Imaginations and Daring to Dream
Let's dive together into the fields of imagination and dreams: who has the skills and possibilities to imagine and who doesn't? What dispositions are required to imagine more just and inclusive futures? And why are these circumstances political?
In this masterclass, we will deal theoretically and practically with questions of politics of imaginations: Ouassima Laabich will share practical methods (both known and newly tested) as well as insights from her work within the context of Muslim Futures. This class will be interactive and explorative: feel welcomed to join the worlds of futuring.
The masterclass is open to all students in relevant subjects. It will take place on Tuesday 16 April 2024 from 10 am to 12 noon. Venue: Huizinga 0.23c. Interested? Please send an e-mail to Yasmin Ismail at y.ismail@fsw.leidenuniv.nl by 15 April 2024 describing how the masterclass is relevant to you.