Membership

The plurality University Network is open to all individuals and organizations, under no other condition than the online approval of a Charter and/or Code of Conduct. People with membership status enjoy:

Full read/write access to U+’s online communications channels and events;
Access to U+’s network of members;
Access to, and voice on, all information relative to the organization, its activities, its funds, and the projects it carries out or supports;
The possibility to contribute in defining the Plurality University’s current and future directions;
The possibility to work on projects;
Access to information on all potential and future projects, and the possibility to submit or discuss projects.
The possibility to participate in collective decisions, in general by means of “lazy consensus” (no explicit objection meaning “Yes”) and in other cases, through consensus-seeking mechanisms;
The possibility to nominate oneself and/or vote for the Supervisory Board.

Look through our projects, take part, and let us know how to make them better! U+’s experimental approach is not possible without our members’ (your) engagement. Your returns, comments, experiences are what makes the project evolve and become more impactful. U+ is a learning process organized around one common objective (imaginaries for alternative futures) and common values (diversity, plurality, openness and sharing).

Become a member

Supervisory board

As an open organisation, the Plurality University Network (U+) has a supervisory board. The board’s function is to support, make suggestions and review how U+ operate through its activities. Once every month, board members meet online to review projects, share ideas and decide on next actions.

The Supervisory Board is composed of 6-9 individuals of diverse geographic origins, genders, abilities, and practices. On half of the board is elected yearly by members during our General Assembly, through online voting.

2022 supervisory board

Ketty Steward (Presiding member)

Born in 1976 in Martinique, Ketty Steward is a writer, with more than 40 science-fiction short stories published as well as poetry and stories outside the Sci-Fi genre. Ketty Steward also gives conferences and courses, and has coordinated special issues of science-fiction magazines.

Adwaita Das

Adwaita Das is the author of Colours of Shadow, a novella and short fiction collection, as well as the books of poetry, 27 Stitches and Songs of Sanity. Global speaker and creative facilitator for inclusive and innovative mental healthcare, Adwaita applies sound and imagery to address trauma and share peace.

Jorge Camacho

Jorge Camacho is a strategic designer, foresight strategist, researcher, and lecturer. He is a research affiliate at Institute for the Future and a co-founder of Diagonal: a research, design, and futures studio based in Mexico City. He’s a lecturer at Centro, Ibero, EGADE Business School, and ISDI.

Mary Anne Mohanraj

Mary Anne Mohanraj is author of A Feast of Serendib, Bodies in Motion, The Stars Change, and twelve other titles. Mohanraj founded Hugo-nominated and World Fantasy Award-winning speculative literature magazine Strange Horizons, and serves as Executive Director of both DesiLit and the Speculative Literature Foundation.

Mimi Mondal

Mimi Mondal is a Hugo and Nebula Award-nominated author of science fiction and fantasy and a columnist writing about history, politics, technology and futures.

Petra Ardai

Petra Ardai is a theater maker, teacher, and writer. She is artistic leader of the artists’ collective SPACE, rooted in Amsterdam and Budapest.
“I am convinced that co-creative art experiences can cultivate cultural shifts, make fundamental changes and collaborations possible even under circumstances when nothing else seems to work anymore.”

Lara Houston

Lara Houston is a Research Fellow at the University of Sussex. She investigates how citizen-led and creative practices can inform sustainable transitions (as part of the CreaTures project).

Brigitte van der Sande

Brigitte van der Sande is founding/artistic director of Other Futures, a multidisciplinary platform for makers and thinkers of speculative fiction based in Amsterdam. With a festival, exhibition, events and an online feed, Other Futures introduce the critical potential of this genre to a diverse community.

Nicolas Gluzman

My professional paths led me to work in human resources consulting, sales and business developments before moving to corporate role in HR. For the last 2 years, I have been developing a concept called “Futurs Proches” (“Near Futures”) which is about organising workshops (open for everyone) to co-imagine and co-write short stories about a desirable future. It is now a collective of 50 facilitators across Switzerland, France, Belgium and the Netherlands.

Access the 2022 board election factsheet (.pdf)

Team

The association is run by a small team oversighted by the Supervisory Board. The team conducts the projects proposed and initiated by the board and its members, creates partnerships with other organisations, communicates about the organisation, organises and conducts all of U+’s related actions: meetings, publications, workshops, etc.

Current team

Daniel Kaplan

Daniel Kaplan is a futurist and entrepreneur, with one leg in innovation, and another in imagination. In 2000, he created the Next-Generation Internet Foundation (Fing), a think-&-do-tank to “anticipate digital transformations”. In 2018, he co-founded the Plurality University.

Chloé Luchs

Chloe Luchs is a creative director with a multidisciplinary background in arts, digital culture and international organizations. She strategies, develops projects and new collective methods for environmental transformations and futures literacy. She curates and produces artistic formats to make these thematics seizable to larger audiences. In 2018, she co-founded the Plurality University.

Juliette Lepineau

Juliette Lepineau is a French Graphic Designer. Her work is inspired by our relationship to time and movement, by questioning a few small gestures of our daily lives, by trying to create a new language.

General Assembly

U+’s third General Assembly and Board Election will be held between May 23 and June 1, 2022. This event is online and open to all members who joined before May 23, 2022.

According to the Statutes (French) / English), the General Assembly needs to take three formal decisions:

Approve the 2021 Activity Report and 2022 Action Plan
Approve the 2021 Accounts (Originals in French / English summary)
Elect the Board, which means we need candidates! Those who wish to stand for the board needed to declare themselves before May 16, 2022. The vote takes place between May 23 and June 1.

Also, we want the General Assembly to be a place for substantive discussion on what U+ should become, what it should do, and how. To this end, we are organizing four open Zoom calls, in two languages (French, English), at different times so as to allow members from all continents to join:

The Board

If you wish to stand for election to U+’s Board, please fill in this online form as soon as possible, and no later than May 16, 2022. The current list of board members is accessible here.

What does being a board member mean?