“Our lives are dictated by the hateful”. So, says Kübra Gümüşay, seize your own language, and let it forge a loving future

We’re excited to present some of the public speaking work of academic and activist Kübra Gümüşay. See her “about” page below:

Gümüşay is a bestselling author, speaker and founder of award winning organisations and campaigns. She is currently a Mercator Senior Fellow at CRASSH, University of Cambridge, researching just futures, real utopias and politics of imagination.

She is the author of the bestselling book “Sprache § Sein”(“Speaking and Being” to be published in May 2022) and founder of several award winning campaigns and associations – most recently eeden, a feminist co-creation space in Hamburg (selected as „Kultur- und Kreativpiloten Deutschland“ in 2019), and future_s, a feminist research- and advocacy organisation for desirable futures.

In 2018, Forbes Magazine selected her as one of “30 under 30” in Europe. In 2021 she was recipient of the Tarabya Artist in Residency Fellowship of the German Kulturakademie. As of 2022, as a Senior Mercator Fellow, Gümüşay is a fellow at the Centre for Research in Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences( CRASSH), Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence and a Visiting Fellow at Jesus College, University of Cambridge.

The embed above is from last month. Here’s the blurb:

In her best-selling book "Speaking and Being" Kübra Gümüsay explored the power of language, how it shapes the way we think and perceive the world – and its implication on our culture and political discourse.

In this book, she also set the foundations for the imagination of a productive discourse – one that allows us to constructively debate, argue and seek solutions for the many obstacles our respective societies face, from the climate crisis and sexism to racism and poverty.

Utopia, some might say. Doable, Kübra would argue. For the research for her new book Kübra inquires into the impact of future imaginations on our present. Her talk on language and utopia will include some of the first insights of this inquiry.

And below, Kübra’s passionate 2017 TEDxBerlin presentation, “Organised Love”