This article offers a short scholarly reflection on the 20th international conference of the Utopian Studies Society, themed around utopia, dystopia and climate change, and hosted by Monash University’s European centre in Prato, Italy. Engaging with numerous threads which emerged organically across multiple panels, this article positions the notions of change, resistance, and activism within the heart of the conference’s focus. In doing so, it relates the implications of these discussions to the wider ecological future of the planet, asking how utopian ideals are enacted, challenged and expanded in a time of global crisis. Simultaneously, it turns its gaze inwards, applying its thinking to the structures of the conference and Society itself, asking how utopian principles may be practised within the workings of utopian studies itself, as well as the wider academic field.
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