Dr Emily Spiers

Senior Lecturer in Creative Futures

Research Overview

Emily Spiers is Senior Lecturer in Creative Futures and German. Their work focuses on narrative as a tool for Futures Literacy, as well as future-oriented, innovative trends in communicative, socio-digital and literary practices. They explore how futures are being envisaged, anticipated and made through art and literature -- and how creative narratives can help articulate multiple futures in fields as diverse as defence, education and climate-change research.

Their research into authorship focuses on spoken-word poetry as an aesthetic, socio-digital and political practice, and as a world literary phenomenon. Underpinning their work is the question of how, through the presence of the author-performer, performance poetry foregrounds the question of agency in relation to literature: the active shaping of a world in time that literature carries out.

Find out about FLiNT

Visit my page on Academia.edu.

Selected Publications

"There's no lobby for girls in pop": writing the performative pop-feminist subject
Spiers, E. 04/2015 In: German pop literature. Berlin : de Gruyter
Chapter (peer-reviewed)

The long march through the institutions: from Alice Schwarzer to pop-feminism and the new German girls
Spiers, E. 03/2014 In: Oxford German Studies. 43, 1, p. 69-88. 20 p.
Journal article

"Alpha-Maedchen sind wir alle": subjectivity, agency and solidarity in Anglo-American and German pop-feminist writing
Spiers, E. 2012 In: Angermion: Yearbook for Anglo-German Literary Criticism, Intellectual History and Cultural Transfers. 5, p. 191-218. 29 p.
Journal article

ESRC Centre for Sociodigital Futures
01/05/2022 → 30/04/2027
Research

Future cyber-security provocations for RISCS/Thales
14/06/2021 → 21/06/2021
Consultancy

DEFRA climate and environment futures
10/05/2021 → …
Consultancy

DEFRA Futures Advisory Group
27/03/2020 → …
Consultancy

Futures Literacy through Narrative (FLiNT)
01/01/2020 → …
Research

Graphic Futures
17/10/2017 → 30/06/2018
Research

Stories in Dialogue
05/10/2017 → 01/10/2018
Other

Cultural Literacy and Social Futures
09/09/2017 → 09/09/2019
Other

The Author and the world: New interdisciplinary approaches to authorship
06/01/2014 → 05/01/2016
Research

Creating Narratives for Policy, Risk and Uncertainty
01/01/1900 → …
Research

Working with Dstl to design and create their new VR Museum of the Future
01/01/1900 → …
Consultancy

Enhancing engagement with futures literacy through narrative
Invited talk

HM Government Open Innovation Team: Future-proofing UK education and children’s care policy in England
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

British Embassy in Germany and the UK Science and Innovation Network
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

DSTL Futures Community of Practice workshop
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

DCDC Global Strategic Trends
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

University of Liverpool
Visiting an external academic institution

Narratives for Policy and Risk
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Creating Narratives for Policy and Risk
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Social Futures: The View from Lancaster
Invited talk

Comparative approaches to German Studies: ‘Worlding’ Literature for a Creative Future
Invited talk

Transnational Feminist Futures: On Pop-Feminist Narratives and Queer-Feminist Activism in German-Speaking Europe
Invited talk

‘Candid Little Hunters’: Narrative Futures for the ‘End-Game’
Invited talk

Us and Them
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

DSTL POTRA People Opportunities Threats and Radical Approaches - Future Scenarios Workshop
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Storytelling and Global Futures
Public Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

Anticipation 2017
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Translating Practices: Languages and Translation in Higher Education from a Cross-cultural Perspective
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Modern Languages Open (Journal)
Editorial activity

Writing as a material practice
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Locating Creation
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Cultural Literacy in Europe
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

ACLA annual conference
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Culture and the Future
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

ACLA Annual Conference
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Screening the literary
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Materials Science Institute PhD Student, MSF PhDs Cohort 2 (2019/20)

  • Authors and the World
  • Institute for Social Futures - Leadership Team
  • ISF Anniversary Lecturers
  • MSF Supervisors 2019/20
  • Performing Identities
  • Poetics of Resistance