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Staff and students from across The University of Manchester came together on 8 May 2026 for Convivial Futures: Living well together on a climate-ravaged planet, a symposium organised by the sustainability network within the School of Environment, Education and Development, Sustainability@SEED. The event created space for interdisciplinary discussion on how mobility, belonging and kinship might be reimagined in the context of climate disruption, ecological loss and increasingly contested ideas of home. 

Bringing together perspectives from development economics, disaster studies, environmental education, social anthropology, and across the arts and humanities, participants considered how more inclusive and welcoming forms of community can be built in a world shaped by ecological disintegration.  

Socio-economic upheavals caused and exacerbated by climate change are radically redefining 鈥榟ome鈥� for many earthlings of all species. At the same time, rigidly binary definitions such as native/invasive relating to plants and animals echo divisive rhetoric about human migration and who does and doesn鈥檛 belong. Discussions focused on how institutions, educators and communities can respond to movement and uncertainty without falling back on stigmatising outsiders.   

In a break from the conventional conference format, part of the day took place outdoors at the campus allotment in a session co-organised by Professor Jennifer O鈥橞rien. Participants repotted sunflower seedlings, watered vegetable plots and reflected on what multispecies conviviality might look like in practice. The session also highlighted the importance of creating more spaces for biodiversity to thrive in support of the University鈥檚 . 

Students from the 91直播 Institute of Education鈥檚  also shared reflections on place-based learning, including the potential of virtual field trips to broaden understandings of sustainability in practice. Speakers throughout the day emphasised the need for more diverse and inclusive approaches to sustainability and conservation, challenging Eurocentric and anthropocentric assumptions. As speaker Saima Ansari said: 鈥淪ometimes the hardest assumptions to challenge aren鈥檛 the ones out there, but the ones we don鈥檛 realise we carry.鈥� 

Hope was a recurring theme across the symposium. Professor Alison Browne said: 鈥淚f we don鈥檛 give them [our students] hope, we can鈥檛 give them anything.鈥� The event reinforced the role of higher education not only in developing knowledge and employability, but also in nurturing the imagination, critical thinking and collective responsibility needed to respond to ecological and social challenges. For attendees, the symposium offered both a practical and intellectual reminder that more just, sustainable and convivial futures must be actively created together.