This winter term 2023/2024 we present to you our 10th round of RUSTlab Lectures. Come and join us on-site at the RUSTlab in Bochum or tune in live via ZOOM, Thursdays from 14-16 hrs / 16-18 hrs German time for exciting talks and discussions around this term’s guiding theme: Best Futures.

There are bigger-better-faster futures, business-as-usual futures, futures of technological innovation and futures of a damaged planet. What are our dreams and aspirations for the best future? What do we fear or dread? Which legacies must be trialled, tested or secured? What dilemmas should we engage with, when best futures are at stake? What responsibilities do we carry for those who come after us? What skills are needed to build futures and how do we train them? Who owns futures and how are they distributed? Which (planetary) resources of and for future-making are of concern?


These questions posed in this semester’s RUSTlab Lecture theme demand both speculation and pragmatism. Thinking about best futures is not a futile task, it invites cautious hope, not naïve to the damages already done, nor passive in engaging with the challenges ahead. Best futures try; they might fail; they will be exposed and put at stake. Our way to address what is yet to come is through questions of speculative formulations of how futures can become best.

List of the speakers for the winter term 2023/2024:

12.10.2023, 16-18 hrs Nancy Mauro-Flude (RMIT University, Australia): Thinking with Shells: Decolonising of Digital Culturescapes through Codework

09.11.2023, 14-16 hrs Stefan Laser (Ruhr-University Bochum): Stand-in. A Political Economy of Energy Reserves

07.12.2023, 14-16 hrs Hannes Krämer and Dominik Gerst (University of Duisburg-Essen): Die Zukunft Europas. Prospektive Grenzimaginationen bei Frontex

18.01.2024, 14-16 hrs René Tuma (TU Berlin): How Visual Technologies Shape Police Oversight and Training

01.02.2024, 14-16 hrs Femke Snelting (The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest): Counter Cloud Imaginaries

Download this PDF with a detailed description of our winter 2023/2024 guiding theme.

Lecture poster summer 2023

All lectures will be on-site at the RUSTlab as well as live on ZOOM, Thursday from 14-16 hrs / 16-18 hrs German time.

Address:Universitätstr. 104, 44799 Bochum, Room 201
ZOOM: https://tinyurl.com/RUSTlab
Password: RUSTlab

Download PDF files of previous lecture posters

RUSTlab Lectures – summer term 2023

RUSTlab Lectures – winter term 22/23

RUSTlab Lectures – summer term 2022

RUSTlab Lectures – winter term 21/22

RUSTlab Lectures – summer term 2021

RUSTlab Lectures – winter term 20/21

RUSTlab Lectures – summer term 2020

RUSTlab Lectures – winter term 19/20

RUSTlab Lectures – summer term 2019