Thu 26 Jun 2025 10:00 AM - 4:00 PM

Lady Hale Moot Court Room, 8-10 Berkeley Square, Bristol, BS8 1HH

Join the Centre for Sociodigital Futures for a rich and multifaceted day with Charisse Louw, visiting fellow from Stellenbosch University in South Africa, as she shares her research and practice at the intersections of media, embodiment and world-making. The day’s programme will explore diffractive methodologies, Afropresentism, Black technopoetics and mineral/media materialisms in African cinema, alongside an embodied workshop integrating Qi Gong and ecopoetic movement. Come for one session or immerse yourself in the full experience ~ an inspiring opportunity to think, move, and connect across disciplines.

Charisse Louw is a South African writer, scholar and creative practitioner completing her PhD in African Film, New Materialisms & Indigenous Epistemologies at Stellenbosch University. She holds a Master’s in Cinema Studies from NYU and has worked in many ways and places -- from Hollywood to humanitarian aid in Afghanistan. Currently, she is in development on a show that brings ancestral cosmologies and youth activism into dialogue with digital entanglements. The project asks how intergenerational connections might shape alternative socio-digital futures through exploring ecological, indigenous and speculative themes. She also facilitates wellness and creativity retreats that integrate somatic practices such as qigong, yoga, meditation and embodied writing, in order to cultivate presence, ecological sensitivity and relational attunement. She is delighted to collaborate at the Centre for Sociodigital Futures, where her fellowship explores how African speculative media and participatory storytelling generate new imaginaries for living with technology, rethinking kinship and confronting planetary crisis.