Oxford Ministry for the Future
The Oxford Ministry for the Future (OMF) is an interdisciplinary network of academics, artists and authors from Oxford and beyond who are working on world challenges. It was set up by Hertford Fellow Anette Mikes and former College Principal Tom Fletcher with the blessing and participation of Kim Stanley Robinson, whose eponymous book gives OMF its name and mission: to be an interdisciplinary network and movement that amplifies the voices of humanities in the discussion of our grand challenges.
We organise high-profile public events, fronted by notable authors and artists, to open rich conversations and inspire moral imagination in the context of climate change, the biodiversity crisis, growing inequalities and other political-economy challenges of our time.
Over the last year, speakers have included Richard Powers (Pulitzer Prize for The Overstory), Laline Paull (of The Bees, The Ice and POD), Jonathan Ledgard (of Giraffe, Submersion), Elif Shafak (of There Are Rivers in the Sky) and Kim Stanley Robinson (of The Ministry for the Future).
OMF has recently started a multiyear collaboration with the Schwartzman Centre for the Humanities. We are in the process of preparing a two-day event series as part of the Schwartzman Centre’s Opening Season ‘Utopia Now’, scheduled for 23–24 November 2026.
A History of Utopia with Kim Stanley Robinson and Brian Eno | Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities
Forthcoming events
The Arctic at the Crossroads, 5 November 2025
You are cordially invited to attend OMF’s next public discussion The Arctic at the Crossroads with Bathsheba Demuth, Laline Paull and Joanna Kavenna, plus a panel of academics, for an afternoon of fascinating multidisciplinary conversations about climate, history, ecology and geopolitics.
Find out more and book your place here.
Past events
Conversation with Elif Shafak and Jonny Thomson on Nature and Humans: Connectedness, conflicts and rights
Like most things in nature, ‘the river is a giver, the river is a taker’. And we are many things to it: exploiters, beneficiaries, dependants, polluters, destroyers, healers, stewards and guardians. The most recent OMF event, at the Weston Library on 2 June 2025, focused on water. We heard stories about our fraught relationship with rivers from author Elif Shafak, water scientist Robert Hope, London barrister and founder of Lawyers for Nature Paul Powlesland, river historian Katherine Ibbet, political economist Rebecca Henderson, and ecologist Sandra Diaz (Tyler Prize, 2025).
Art, Nature and Science: Imagining other worlds
On 28 April 2025, OMF hosted global cultural icon Brian Eno and environmental novelists and storytellers Kim Stanley Robinson, Laline Paull and JM Ledgard at the Sheldonian Theatre. We were treated to the premiere of ‘Life Wants to Live’: a braided reading underscored by original music composed by Brian Eno for this occasion. The performance stimulated interdisciplinary academic discussions about the biodiversity crisis and its solutions, with anthropologist Nayanika Mathur (of Crooked Cats), ecological economist Dr Nicola Ranger and political scientist Thomas Hale (of Long Problems).
In Conversation with Richard Powers
Richard Powers is an American novelist whose works explore the effects of modern science and technology. He won the 2006 National Book Award for Fiction for his novel The Echo Maker and the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Overstory, and he has also won many other awards over the course of his career, including a MacArthur Fellowship.
The inaugural OMF event took place at the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford on 13 June 2024.
A panel discussion with Kim Stanley-Robinson, which took place in the Weston Library on 14 June 2022, planted the seed for an Oxford Ministry for the Future.