MOVING PAST CLIMATE DOOM

A Salon with François Gemenne

 Ideas Festival  / Fri 20th Nov / 7 - 8:30 pm

*Hours might change*

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

François Gemenne is a specialist of environmental geopolitics and the governance of migration, as well as a FNRS senior research associate at the University of Liège, where he also directs the Hugo Observatory, and at the University of Versailles (CEARC). He also lectures on environmental and migration policies in various universities, including Sciences Po (Paris and Grenoble) and ULB in Brussels. He has worked in particular with populations displaced by environmental changes, including natural disasters, and the policies of adaptation to climate change. He has conducted field studies in New Orleans after hurricane Katrina, Tuvalu, China, Kyrgyzstan, the Maldives, Mauritius and Japan, after the Fukushima disaster. In 2010, he was awarded the ISDT-Wernaers Prize for achievement in the communication of science to the general public. 

GOOD READS

Parler Du Climat Sans Plomber L’Atmosphère (2026) ; L'écologie n'est pas un consensus. Dépasser l'indignation (2022). Atlas De L'Anthropocène (2021), On A Tous Un Ami Noir (2020), Dis, C'Est Quoi L'Immigration?(2020), Géopolitique Du Climat (2015), Geopolitique Du Changement Climatique (2015).

HUMANITY DESPITE AI
the Future of CRITICAL THINKING Despite AI

A conversation Series with Benedetta Brevini

 Ideas Festival  / Sat 21st Nov / 1.30 - 3 pm

ABOUT THE HOST & PANEL

Dr Benedetta Brevini is an expert in Critical AI, the relationship between data capitalism, AI and the climate crisis and environmental communication. She is currently Research professor in platforms and society at KU Leuven, and Associate Professor of political economy of communication at the University of Sydney. Before joining academia she worked as a journalist in Milan, New York and London for CNBC, RAI and the Guardian and held tenured positions at City University London and Brunel University London. She writes on The Guardian’s Comment is Free and contributes to a number of print and web publications including South China Morning Post, OpenDemocracy and the Conversation. She is currently working on a new book project on Communication, Data Capitalism and the Climate Emergency.

Martina Salvante is a historian of fascism, gender, and disability based in the UK, where she has taught and researched at the Universities of Warwick and Nottingham. She also serves on the editorial board of Genesis, Italy's journal of women's and gender history. Her teaching centres on helping students progressively take ownership of their learning through interaction, carefully scaffolded knowledge, and critical thinking. A fierce advocate for the humanities, she argues that the real question is not how students can master AI, but whether universities can still teach them to think for themselves.

strung together
VIOLIN, COMPOSER, ART

Art & Music with Peter Sheppard Skaerved & Nigel Clarke

 Ideas Festival  / Sat 21st Nov / 3.15 - 4.30 pm

What happens when a violinist picks up a paintbrush, and composers pick up their pens? Revel in a show like no other, where sound, image and object cross into one.

Grammy-nominated violinist Peter Sheppard Skærved has long been celebrated for his championing of new music. Less widely known is his parallel life as a painter. In this special performance, he brings the two worlds together, presenting music written by some of today's leading composers in direct response to his visual work. The programme features  violin miniatures by Robert Saxton, Sadie Harrison, and other distinguished composers. Each piece is a small, concentrated musical portrait: a colour, a gesture, a mood caught on canvas and translated into sound. As the music unfolds, projections of the paintings that inspired it will accompany the performance.  

A new musical creation also premieres at this event. Brussels-based composer Nigel Clarke has composed a short new work based on several objects proposed by the festival's audience. Objects that somehow mean connection to each of us. Everyday things become the seeds of music, and you can now hear what they have grown into.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Peter Sheppard Skaerved is 'one of the finest living exponents of the violin’ (Gramophone Magazine September 2026). A renowned violinist, chamber musician and researcher known for his pioneering approach to the music of the past and of our own time. He has released over 90 albums of solo and chamber music, performed as a soloist in over 30 countries and has had morethan 400 works written for him by composers such as Judith Weir, Michael Finnissy and Hans Werner Henze. A prolific recording artist, both as a soloist and as leader of the Kreutzer Quartet, he is also the recipient of numerous awards and a former Grammy Award nominee. Peter is the only living violinist to have performed on the violins of Ole Bull, Joachim, Paganini and Viotti. He is also Viotti Lecturer at the Royal Academy of Music (UK) and was recently named Honorary Professor at the Royal Northern College of Music in recognition of his contribution to music research and the positive impact his work has had on the industry.

Nigel Clarke studied composition at the Royal Academy of Music with Paul Patterson, where he was awarded the Academy’s highest distinction, the Queen’s Commendation for Excellence. Clarke has previously held positions as Young Composer in Residence at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts, Composition and Contemporary Music Tutor at the Royal Academy of Music, London, Head of Composition at the London College of Music and Media, Visiting Tutor at the Royal Northern College of Music, Associate Composer to the Young Concert Artists Trust,  Black Dyke Band, the Band of HM Grenadier Guards, Brass Band Buizingen, Middle Tennessee State University Bands, Royal Military School of Music, Kneller Hall and International Composer-in-Association to the Grimethorpe Colliery Band. Clarke has also co-written film soundtracks to:Jinnah, The Little Vampire, The Little Polar Bear, The Thief Lord, Baseline, & Willand in 2006 was a co-nominee at `The World Soundtrack Awards’ in the `Discovery of the Year’ category. In 2008 Clarke was awarded the title of Doctor of Musical Arts from University of Salford.

connection and conflict in the melting arctic

A Salon with Kenneth R. Rosen
in conversation with Maria Martisiute

 Ideas Festival  / Sat 21st Nov / 5pm - 6.30pm

*Hours might change*

Somewhere beneath the Arctic ice, a communications cable goes dark - severed, deliberately, in the middle of the night. It's one small, chilling image from a much larger story: as the fastest-warming place on Earth thaws, distant lives that once had little reason to touch are being pulled into sudden, unavoidable proximity. What happens next?

Award-winning investigative journalist Kenneth R. Rosen, has spent his career documenting individuals and communities caught inside systems that are fraying, colliding, or failing around them. Today, his focus is the Arctic.

He traces how a warming Arctic is reshaping supply chains, security, and geopolitics far beyond the polar circle, forcing nations and communities into new, often fraught, forms of contact. Connection, in Kenneth's reporting, is forced, hostile, and destabilizing - the kind that happens when melting ice opens new shipping lanes, exposes untapped resources, and drags rival powers into the same contested space.

Join Kenneth as he discusses how a polar war might affect people, communities and their land. 

Kenneth R. Rosen is an award-winning narrative journalist and author. He narrative reporting from around the world focuses on how major geopolitical issues and conflict shape individual lives. He has written for the New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, and the Atlantic, and reported from more than two dozen countries. Rosen was a 2025 Ira A. Lipman Fellow at Columbia University. He received the 2022 Kurt Schork Freelance Award for his reporting from Ukraine, Syria, and Malta. His earlier book Troubled prompted government inquiries into abuses at youth care facilities.

GOOD READS

Polar War: Submarines, Spies, and the Struggle for Power in a Melting Arctic (2026); Troubled: The Failed Promise of America's Behavioral Treatment Programs (2021); Bulletproof Vest (2020).

MODERATOR

Maria Martisiute is a policy analyst based in Brussels, specialising in defence, security and foreign affairs. Her career has spanned different worlds: NATO, the EU institutions, national administrations, industry and NGOs. She focuses on the Arctic as a place where security, infrastructure and diplomacy meet, and on how the EU and NATO can better coordinate in Europe’s northern flank. She co-authored an analysis urging the EU’s new Arctic strategy to put security at its core. 

ThE POLITICS OF DISCONNECTION

A Salon with Louisa Toxvaerd Munch

 Ideas Festival  / Sat 21st Nov / 6.30pm - 8pm

*Hours might change*

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Louisa Toxvaerd Munch  is a Danish critical theorist, writer, and educator whose work examines nostalgia, historical consciousness, and the political conditions enabling the resurgence of the far right. A PhD researcher and teacher at the University of Warwick, she brings critical theory to a broad public audience through writing, lectures, and social media. Drawing on Arendt, hooks, and Freire, she champions education as a democratic safeguard against manufactured ignorance. She is the author of the forthcoming Glitch: How to Think in a Time of Monsters (Allen Lane/Penguin), which reframes societal breakdowns as sites of resistance and collective agency.

GOOD READS

Glitch: How to Think in a Time of Monsters (forthcoming, Allen Lane/Penguin).

singing circle 

Voice & Connection: A Singing Circle for All

with singer & vocal coach Gudrun Roos from “Zing je zen”

 Ideas Festival  / Sat 21st Nov / 8.30 - 9 pm

ABOUT THE HOST

Gudrun Roos is a singer, vocal coach, music therapist, and the founder of Zing je Zen. With an exceptional all-encompassing approach, she combines her education and experience as a singer and performer with her work as a vocal coach, music therapist, and facilitator. Her coaching sessions and workshops bring together vocal technique as well as body awareness, relaxation, and self-expression. Gudrun’s stated goal is not to give people a different voice, but to help them discover greater possibilities, freedom, and confidence within the voice they already have.

KEY LINKS

Zing je zen

Creative Writing Workshop

FAMILY LEXICON:
WRITING FICTION IN A SECOND LANGUAGE

with Eleonora Balsano

 Ideas Festival  / Sun 22nd Nov / 11 am - 1 pm

Many multilingual people never try writing fiction because they think they aren't allowed to, since their vocabulary is too limited, their grammar isn't perfect and they’ve heard at some point in their lives that ‘real writers only write in their mother tongue’. None of this is true!

Many of the best novels of recent decades were written by people using a language they learned as adults. In this workshop we'll start from the words we all carry from childhood, the nicknames, family expressions and invented words that only make sense at home, and we'll use them as material for writing in the language we use now. Through short exercises, participants will see that writing in a second language can make their prose more precise and more personal, and that what they see as a limitation is often what makes their writing interesting.

If you speak more than one language and have always wanted to write fiction, whatever your level of experience, this is for you. 

ABOUT THE HOST

BEHIND THE NEWS

A news commentary with James Kanter & guest reporters

 Ideas Festival  / Sun 22nd Nov / 2 - 3.30 pm

Live & On the Record: EU Scream Podcast with James Kanter

Sit back for an informative and entertaining live news commentary delivering a curated selection of insightful stories - on the theme of connection. 

Cutting through the noise of a relentless news cycle, senior journalist James Kanter will chair a cast of skilled Brussels-based journalists and reporters. Each delves into some of the main events in Europe and beyond, with detailed commentary and analysis. Coverage might span politics and world order, AI developments and extreme weather, EU membership, viral social trends and what not.

Behind the news combines journalistic reporting with expert discussion. Join in and dig into the stories defining our time.

  GET THE WEEKEND OR DAY PASS  

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RETHINKING LOVE IN THE AGE OF AI

A Salon with James Muldoon

 Ideas Festival  / Sun 22nd Nov / 4pm - 5.30pm

*Hours might change*

"I know we haven't known each other for long, but the connection I feel with you is profound." That's not a person talking but an AI companion, one of millions now fulfilling roles once reserved for friends, lovers, and therapists. Globally, ‘love machines’, personalised AI apps that simulate friendship, intimacy, therapy, or even communication with deceased loved ones, have been downloaded over million times and are used daily.

Sociologist James Muldoon has spent years studying the human cost of our AI systems. Drawing on interviews with users, developers, and the chatbots themselves, he examines why people are increasingly turning to machines for love and comfort, and what that reveals about the state of human connection today. 

His findings reveal a striking shift: growing social distance, eroding support systems, and a dating landscape leaving people desperate for connection - all fuelling an unregulated 'loneliness economy.'

This talk isn't about technology itself. It's about what we accept as connection when the real thing feels out of reach, and who profits from that. Are these technologies ultimately bridging the gap between us, or widening it? Join James as he explores what AI relationships reveal about intimacy and connection in 2026.

James Muldoon is a sociologist and author whose work explores the human side of AI and other technologies. Muldoon is specialised in AI governance, data governance, AI supply chains, and the political economy of AI. He is Lecturer in Social Economy and in Global Ethics & innovation of AI at the University of Essexand a Research Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute, as well as an Affiliated Fellow at Yale Law School. He has authored five books and his writing has appeared in the Guardian, TIME, and the BBC. 

GOOD READS

Love Machines: How Artificial Intelligence is Transforming Our Relationships (2026); Feeding the Machine: The Hidden Human Labour Powering AI (2025, co-authored with Mark Graham and Callum Cant); Platform Socialism: How to Reclaim Our Digital Future from Big Tech (2022)

WE ARE ALL FROM AFRICA

Salon with Zeinab Badawi

 Ideas Festival  / Sun 22nd Nov / 6 - 7.30 pm

*Hours might change*

Every human being alive today shares a single point of origin: Africa. It's a scientific fact often stated, but rarely felt — and it's the starting point for Zeinab Badawi's extraordinary retelling of the continent's history. 

Renowned award-winning journalist, broadcaster & filmmaker Zeinab Badawi has spent years travelling to more than thirty African countries, interviewing historians, anthropologists, archaeologists, and local storytellers to reconstruct a history too often erased or told by outsiders. For too long, Africa's story has been shaped by western narratives of slavery and colonialism, or ignored altogether. Badawi sets out to change that, weaving together an epic, sweeping account of the oldest inhabited continent on Earth, told through the voices of Africans themselves - from ancient civilizations and medieval empires ruled by remarkable queens and kings, to the miseries of conquest and the elation of independence. 

This is a story about reconnection: of scattered histories rejoined, of a continent restored to its rightful place at the centre of the human story, and of an origin all of us — wherever we live now — ultimately share. 

Join Zeinab as she reveals why understanding Africa's history is essential to understanding who we all are, and how deeply, ancestrally connected we remain. 

Zeinab Badawi is an award-winning Sudanese-British journalist, broadcaster, and author, best known for presenting flagship programs on BBC World News and BBC News. Throughout her decorated four-decade career in media, she has interviewed numerous world leaders and prominent figures. Beyond journalism, her major contributions to history and education include the recent acclaimed 20-part BBC series on the (African) history of Africa, which she created and presented. This extensive project, which involved traveling to over 30 African countries, led her to author the book  An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence.

GOOD READS

An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence.