ASU’s Humanities Institute welcomes Worldbuilding Initiative

After three years at ASU’s Lincoln Center for Applied Ethics, Worldbuilding will join the Humanities Institute’s wide-ranging umbrella of faculty-led initiatives that facilitate conversation and foster community. Matt Bell, creative writing professor in ASU’s Department of English and author of books such as “Appleseed” and “Refuse to be Done,” leads the initiative which strives to nurture the imagination in pursuit of a better, more innovative and inclusive future.

Every semester, Worldbuilding brings prominent storytellers such as award winners Talia Lakshmi Kolluri and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah in conversation with students and faculty at ASU through formal and experimental workshops as well as a distinguished lecture series, as documented on the Worldbuilding archive on YouTube. In the past, Worldbuilding has explored topics like the future of reproductive rights, sci-fi economics, public policy, constructed languages, artificial intelligence, the importance of preserving archives and many others.

“Worldbuilding reminds us that other worlds are possible! What an important message,” Ron Broglio, director of the Humanities Institute, says. “I’m excited that the Humanities Institute can host Worldbuilding with its range of interdisciplinary topics and the variety of students, faculty, staff, and community members who lead and participate in this program. This initiative is exemplary of what humanities does best — help us imagine beyond our current state of affairs to possible worlds by using the tools of culture and fiction.”

During the 2025-26 academic year, Worldbuilding will host novelist Erika Swyler, who most recently authored “We Lived on the Horizon,” as the fall distinguished lecturer during the College’s Humanities Week — and another lecturer to-be-announced in the spring. Two workshops are currently planned for fall including Cones and Caution: The Precarity of Sending Signals to the Future, about how we in the present attempt to communicate with future generations, and Liquid Resistance in Africanfuturism, which will be led by Dr. Jenna Hanchey and draw on her research in the literary area.

“I'm thrilled to have the Worldbuilding Initiative housed now at the Humanities Institute, among so many other programs I admire,” Bell says. “This initiative was always meant to highlight the important speculative and future-aimed work being down in the Humanities at ASU, and I look forward to collaborating with the Humanities Institute at broadening the reach and impact of all the good work done by our students, staff, and faculty.”

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