FAB events — A manifesto for the future

In conjunction with PSi’s Constellate series, the Future Advisory Board (FAB) is hosting a three-phase intervention on the experience of precarity for emerging academics in 2025, culminating in a new manifesto and performative reading at the at the PSi #30 Conference: XXX Cruzo, Cruising, Crossroads in Fortaleza, Brazil. 

There are things that are happening that need to be recorded. And there is a need to hang on to what is possible for the future of academia. 

Tipping point: a global precarity report, is a recording of this time and a manifesto for the future. There are three phases to the project.

First intervention: Provocations and Activations

In intimate in-person events hosted by FAB members across the world, we have been inviting postgraduate, early-career researchers and artist-academics to file a complaint! These discussions have mapped the various forms of precarity faced by the ‘cusp’ conditions of the almost-but-not-quite academic. The findings are being recorded through written, audio, and visual materials, and will be collated, compared, and reassembled into a global map, capturing the local and shared experiences of the emerging academic. We will also use these local complaints as the foundation for building and performing a global manifesto or precarity (see second and third interventions below).

Because making a complaint is precarious, we have thus far kept these events to our local networks. However, we know precarity is not isolated and that building a narrative and a movement means gathering all voices in power and complaint. That is why we now open this intervention out to you. We are asking that you download our tested ‘playbook’ and become a local facilitator for your own complaint session with trusted colleagues. The question we ask you in solidarity is: What are the hyperlocal experiences of academic precarity you want recorded?

Once you gather your local complaint using the playbook, we are asking that you share those experiences with FAB in whatever form your local group agrees. These local complaints will form the basis of our second intervention in June. 

Download your playbook here. Send your submissions here. 

Do you have questions or want to discuss your event? Contact us here for support. 

Please note that the deadline for submissions is June 16th

Second intervention: Assembling the Pieces, June 18 2025

Through a mix of synchronous and asynchronous online events, global participants are invited to contribute to the development of an emerging academic manifesto. The manifesto is a response to—and way of naming—our particular experience of precarity, and, additionally, a space for possibility, idealism and hope; what could early academia look like?

The manifesto working groups will draw on the materials produced from local in-person events, and aim to reflect both hyper-specific and shared experiences. 

Join us for the online event over zoom on June 18, 2025 @7:00 PM Singapore, SGT | 7:00 AM New York, EST | 1:00 PM Johannesburg, SAST | 9:00 PM Sydney, AEST

Third intervention: Performing the Manifesto and the Futuring Academia workshop, December 2025 as part of PSi annual conference in Fortaleza, Brazil.

In this final action, FAB, and any workgroup participants who would like to, will perform a reading of the manifesto—live in person and online at the PSi #30 Conference: XXX Cruzo, Cruising, Crossroads in Fortaleza, Brazil. 

Additionally, we will be working in collaboration with local artists in Brazil to facilitate a futuring workshop for postgraduate, early career researchers and artist-academics. Our futuring workshop explores, predicts, and reimagines the future of academia that we will enter, and offers steps we might take towards this brave new world.