Brave New World

BRAVE NEW WORLD CONFERENCE

BRAVE NEW WORLD is an annual Art & Science conference for people who want to know what the future holds in store and how this will affect their work and life.

On Thursday 18 September 2025, the worlds of culture, philosophy, science, technology and storytelling will collide.

The Future of Optimism and Resilience

A Decade of Brave Conversations

This year marks the 10th edition of the Brave New World Conference, a milestone in our ongoing exploration of the future. Over the past decade, we have tackled pressing issues such as Intelligence, Disinformation, War, Attention, and AI—topics that are more relevant today than ever before. Many of the warnings and predictions from past discussions have become reality, shaping the world we now navigate.

Yet, true to our spirit, we continue to look forward. In these uncertain times, we turn our focus to optimism—how it works, how people maintain it in the face of adversity, and what a realistic, resilient, optimistic vision for the future might look like amid continuing rapid technological change. We’ll be welcoming some Brave New World alumni back to the stage, along with fresh voices who will guide us through the themes of optimism and resilience.

SPEAKERS 2025

SUMIT PAUL-CHOUDHURY

WRITER, TECHNOLOGIST

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Sumit Paul-Choudhury writes, thinks, and dreams about science, technology, and the future. A former Editor-in-Chief of New Scientist, he trained as an astrophysicist, has worked as a financial journalist, and, at the London Business School, received a Sloan Fellowship in strategy and leadership. Currently, he devotes most of his time to his creative studio Alternity, which puts the ideas in this book into scientific and artistic practice. His latest book, The Bright Side: Why Optimists Have the Power to Change the World, explores how optimism can drive meaningful change.

PAYAL ARORA

INCLUSIVE AI CULTURES

Payal Arora is a Professor of Inclusive AI Cultures at Utrecht University and co-founder of Inclusive AI Lab, a Global South driven tech initiative and FemLab, a feminist futures of work initiative. She is a leading digital anthropologist with two decades of user experiences in the Global South to help shape inclusive AI enabled designs and policies. Payal is the author of 100+ journal articles and award-winning books including “The Next Billion Users” with Harvard Press. Forbes named her the ‘next billion champion’ and the ‘right kind of person to reform tech.’ She has been listed in the 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics 2025 and won the 2025 Women in AI Benelux Award for her work on Diversifying AI. Her new book with MIT Press “From Pessimism to Promise: Lessons from the Global South on Designing Inclusive Tech” has been longlisted for the 2024 Porchlight Business Book Awards and the Silver Medalist for the 2025 Axiom Book Award under the Emerging Tech/AI category.

HAROON SHEIKH

PHILOSOPHER

Haroon Sheikh is a Dutch philosopher with Pakistani and Surinamese roots. He conducts multidisciplinary research on issues relating to international order and new technologies. His work is characterized by a broad orientation on different fields and schools of thought and a fruitful combination of empirical research and abstraction, orthodox as well as unorthodox thinking.

Sheikh is a senior scientist at the WRR (the Dutch Scientific Council for Government Policy) and he teaches in Amsterdam at VU University.

AGNES MEYER-BRANDIS

ARTIST

Agnes Meyer-Brandis is a German artist known for her imaginative and research-driven works that blur the boundaries between art and science. Born in Aachen in 1973 and based in Berlin, she originally studied mineralogy before pursuing sculpture and media arts in Maastricht, Düsseldorf, and Cologne. Her practice explores atmospheric, astronomical, and subterranean phenomena through poetic storytelling and scientific inquiry. Meyer-Brandis is best known for her internationally acclaimed project Moon Goose Colony, in which she raised and trained geese as astronauts, inspired by a 17th-century science fiction tale. Her work often involves collaborations with scientists and institutions, including experiments in zero gravity with the German Space Agency. She has exhibited at major venues such as Centre Pompidou, Ars Electronica, and MIT Media Lab, and has received numerous awards including the Prix Ars Electronica and the European Kairos Prize. Meyer-Brandis invites audiences into fantastical yet rigorously researched worlds that reimagine the relationship between humans, nature, and technology.

ŠPELA PETRIČ

ARTIST

Špela Petrič is a Slovenian hybrid media artist and researcher based in Ljubljana and Amsterdam. Trained in natural sciences, she holds a PhD in biology and advanced degrees in transmedia studies . Her interdisciplinary practice fuses biomedia, new media, and performative methods to explore and challenge the underpinnings of our (bio)technological societies, with particular attention to automation of care in fields like agriculture and medicine

MEIKE BARTELS

PSYCHOLOGIST AND BEHAVIOR GENETICIST

Prof. Meike Bartels is a Dutch psychologist and behavior geneticist known for her pioneering research on the genetics of happiness and well-being. She is a professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where she leads research on how genetic and environmental factors influence mental health and resilience. Her work combines psychology, genetics, and large-scale data analysis to better understand why some people maintain well-being even in the face of adversity.

FRANS SNIK

ASTRONOMER

Frans Snik (1979) is an astronomer at Leiden Observatory (Leiden University, the Netherlands). His group develops advanced optical instrumentation for telescopes around the world and in space, to directly observe and characterize planets orbiting other stars than the Sun, with an ultimate goal to detect signs of extraterrestrial life in their light. To achieve an integrated approach to high-contrast imaging, Frans introduced novel liquid-crystal technology to develop broadband coronagraphs, in combination with wavefront sensing, spectroscopy, and polarimetry. His research led to the first detection of a polarization for an exoplanetary companion (DH Tau b), caused by the formation of moons. His group demonstrated the possibility of the remote detection of homochirality in chlorophyll, a strong biosignature.
These activities also lead to a range of spin-off activities here on Earth: from air pollution monitoring to biomedical sensing. Frans invented the core technology of the SPEX instrument concept that is currently in-orbit as part of the NASA climate satellite PACE/SPEXone, to measure the effects of anthropogenic aerosols on our climate and our health. The development of SPEX led to the development of iSPEX; a smartphone camera add-on that enables air pollution measurements. Frans led the iSPEX project that involved thousands of citizen scientists in the Netherlands and throughout Europe to constitute a unique air pollution measurement network. Frans is currently developing the LOUPE instrument for observations of the Earth-as-an-exoplanet from the Moon, the CoNGA instrument concept for real-time imaging of trace gases, and the HYPERION instrument for medical imaging.
Frans often collaborates with all kinds of scientists and scholars (biologists, engineers, social scientists, art historians, environmental scientists, medical experts), industrial partners, visual artists, policy makers, and society-at-large. He often teaches children from underprivileged backgrounds at the Weekendschool, is a curator at the Old Observatory in Leiden, and regularly appears in the media. Moreover, he is an avid collector of circularly polarized beetles, and builds Lego versions of large telescopes. In 2025, the minor planet 12941 (3.6 km diameter at 2.636 AU) was named “Franssnik”.

JORAN LAMMERS

SPATIAL DESIGN RESEARCHER

Joran conducts spatial design research and teaches about the future imagination of living environments at the University of Leiden. With a background in landscape architecture, he focuses on future images in which a balance is sought between the consumption needs of people—such as food and energy—and the requirements of our living environment, including clean air, nature quality, and water quality. With a realistically optimistic perspective, he clarifies the complexity of our living environment and aims to stimulate a new form of progressive thinking.

PROGRAMME

FIND THE FULL PROGRAMME HERE

As we celebrate our tenth edition this year, we have promised to shake things up a bit and try out a new approach. Instead of a two-day conference, we will host a single-day event with an additional special evening program on Thursday, September 18th.

In collaboration with de Nobel we present the first pilot edition of Wavelength! Wavelength explores the dynamic intersection of sound, music, and science, with a special focus on how these fields interact to shape our understanding of wellbeing and sensory experience. The festival brings together scientists and artists who are rethinking how sound influences the brain, body, and emotions, and how music can be used as a powerful tool for communication, healing, and creative expression.

This year we will be joined by Rebecca Schaefer a Professor in Clinical Neuropsychology focused on music-based health applications, from a perspective of clinical neuropsychology and music neuroscience, Stefanie Egedy - a Brasilian composer, sound artist, and researcher celebrated for her explorations into low-frequency sound and its impact on both human bodies and architectural spaces, Fernando Knopf - musicologist and art director of Berlin studio KLING KLANG KLONG - specialised in crafting immersive auditory experiences and Edwin van der Heide - a sound artist, composer, and researcher known for his innovative work with sound, space, and interactivity.

For more information and tickets please visit the website of Wavelength, or get you tickets on our register page. (Brave New World attendees get a special discount for Wavelength).

BRAVE NEW WORLD CONFERENCE

SPEAKERS 2025

PROGRAMME

PARTNERS