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Human Futures, Machine Pasts: Rethinking AI through Cultural Memory and Imagination
June 27 @ 10:15
Together with The Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS), WASP-HS is hosting an international series of symposium “Human Futures – AI Transisions in a Global Context” carried out with Tokyo College (Japan) and the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS, South Africa). Running from 2026 to 2027, the program brings together scholars from a range of disciplines to examine the broader transformations associated with the rapid development and deployment of artificial intelligence and autonomous systems across different global contexts.
As part of this series we are welcoming you to the open lecture “Human Futures, Machine Pasts: Rethinking AI through Cultural Memory and Imagination” on May 27, 2026. Keynote speaker is Anna Foka, Professor of Digital Humanities, Uppsala University
Abstract
The opening keynote explores how artificial intelligence is reshaping not only the way societies imagine the future but also how we understand the past and define humanity itself. Drawing from cultural heritage, digital humanities, and critical AI studies, it argues that the technologies driving automation and prediction are deeply entangled with inherited cultural narratives, biases, and epistemologies. By tracing the historical continuities between past imaginaries of intelligence and today’s algorithmic systems, the lecture highlights the need for interdisciplinary approaches that foreground ethics, creativity, and global diversity. Ultimately, it asks how the humanities can help us reclaim agency and meaning in an increasingly automated world—turning AI from an object of control into a shared space of interpretation and reflection.
Registration
Pre-registration for the physical event (not Zoom) is required by 25 May 2026 at the latest.
Anna Foka
Professor of Digital Humanities, Uppsala University
About Anna Foka
Anna Foka is Professor of Digital Humanities at Uppsala University and research leader och the WASP-HS research environments AI Futures of Culture and Memory. She is National Mentor for AI in the Swedish South Korea Collaboration in the Research and Innovation Programme (SKERIC). Foka’s work focuses on the cultural and ethical dimensions of artificial intelligence, digital heritage, and interdisciplinary methods across the humanities and technology. She has published widely on digital transformation in museums, archives, and cultural institutions, and currently leads several international projects on AI, sustainability, and cultural knowledge infrastructures. Her latest books are AI and Image (Cambridge University Press) and Evolving Perspectives in Digital Classics (Routledge).