Research Nights: Epistemic FuturesResearch Nights: Epistemic Futures

Taking inspiration from the practices of the Research Fellowship programme and the book Epistemic Imaginaries, this event will explore how hosting and being a guest can become epistemic acts – creating and sharing knowledge, including forms of knowledge that are usually overlooked or erased. The discussion will focus on the idea that the way in which we welcome people, listen to them and share spaces influences the knowledge that emerges and the voices that are heard.

Nieuwe Instituut celebrates research as a collective practice, grounded in unexpected encounters, shared learning and collective enquiry. During the event, we will ask how we might act differently as hosts and guests, especially in the context of institutions and public life. How can institutions support such grassroots knowledge-making? And how can we safeguard the right to think, speak and learn differently? This event is intended as an experiment, not a showcase: a space to try things out, make mistakes and practise forms of knowledge-making that invite friction, diversity and surprise.

• 19:00 Kick-off and group introductions
• 19:30 Breakout sessions
• 20:15 Group discussion with Cláudio Bueno (Explode! School and O Grupo Inteiro), Akil Scafe-Smith (Resolve Collective), Lou Mo (School of Mutants), Manuela Zechner (School of Common Ecologies), Dr Marina Otero Verzier, Najia Bagi and Siegrun Salmanian (The Mosaic Rooms)
• 21:00 Drinks in the Nieuwe Café

More information about the breakout sessions will follow soon.

Over the past decade, the Nieuwe Instituut’s Research Fellowship has supported more than 40 individuals and collectives, both in the Netherlands and internationally, fostering experimental, practice-based and collective research across architecture, design and digital culture. Launched in 2015 with individually commissioned fellows, the programme was expanded in 2016 with the first Open Call. The fellowship has embraced embodied, transdisciplinary forms of learning and investigation ever since. Nieuwe Instituut is currently exploring new ways to support this growing community, with a renewed fellowship due to launch in 2026.

Epistemic Imaginaries focuses on creative educational initiatives, exploring how alternative learning situations reinvent community and knowledge practices. The emphasis is on festivity – celebrating how collective learning spaces foster new ways of being together. From feasting on ideas to hosting dissident knowledges, from blending individual and collective work to growing sustainable knowledge environments and enacting care practices, the book frames alternative learning as a vital intervention: learning is equated with joy, affection and communal flourishing. Featuring essays, reflections, conversations and documentation from a range of international contributors, this book honours the experimental ethos at the heart of knowledge creation.

The visit of Cláudio Bueno, Akil Scafe-Smith, Lou Mo, Manuela Zechner and Siegrun Salmanian has been made possible by the International Visitors Programme. The programme promotes the exchange of knowledge and skills between invited international and Netherlands-based guests in the creative professional field.