*LAST CHANCE TO REGISTER*

Tuesday, 11 & 18 January 2022 • 17.00 – 18.30 CET 

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Let's kick off the New Year with a glass of champagne and two inspiring sessions on how to transform political-economic systems for a sustainable circular society!

Our two-part virtual Embassy New Year's Receptions aim to bring together people across UK-DACH borders and institutional boundaries. Short impulses by Dr Kersty Hobson from Cardiff University (11 January) and Dr Simon Mair (18 January) from the University of Bradford will trigger interesting talking points for the subsequent open discussion round. 

Our participants are keen on engaging internationally and see potential in cross-national cooperation in the field of Circular Economy. The New Year's Sessions aim to define topics that should be discussed more detailed in our big follow-up event in Spring 2022. 
The virtual events are co-organised by the British Embassy Berlin, the UK Science and Innovation Network Germany (SIN) and BABLE.



11 January 2022
Finding Circularity in the Space between Reality and Utopia


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Dr Simon Mair
Lecturer in Circular Economy & Data Analytics | University of Bradford

Moving to circular and sustainable societies requires a complete shift away from the core dynamics of neoliberal capitalism. But even imagining such a shift is incredibly difficult. We live under ‘capitalist realism’, a collective inability to imagine alternative ways of organising our economies. In this session we will discuss the potential for utopian fiction to expand our ideas of what kind of economic change is possible. Using examples from the craft and socialist utopia of William Morris’s News from Nowhere, and the modern genre of solar punk we will explore ways that engaging with utopias can help us gain a critical distance from current dominant economic structures and create a space in which we might imagine something different.


18 January 2022
Citizen-Consumers in the Circular Economy 


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Dr Kersty Hobson 
Reader in Human Geography | School of Geography and Planning | Cardiff University, Wales 

This talk will outline how Circular Economy policies and projects have mapped out specific roles for us all: and the strengths and limits of such mapping. It questions the ‘theory of change’ behind prevailing approaches to ‘engaging’ us all in the Circular Economy, and how we need to think differently about the role of citizen-consumers in the Circular Economy.


Agenda 11 & 18 January (CET)

17.00 | Welcome by the British Embassy Berlin & BABLE
17.05 | Speaker Keynote 
17.20 | Open Discussion with the audience
18.00 | Virtual New Year's Drinks & Optional Networking