Ticket to the Future
Can you predict the politics of tomorrow?
Drop in 13.00-16.00
Samuel Alexander Building, University of Manchester, Oxford Rd, Manchester M13 9PL
2024 has been billed as the most important election year of all time. The Department of African Studies and Anthropology at University of Birmingham invite you to drop in for 15 minutes, test yourself predicting these elections and win a prize.
We will fill a room with materials and exhibits focused on different forms of data that may or may notprovide insight into what might be on the political horizon, together with their crucial anthropological context. We invite you to explore how people think about the future and interrogate your reasoning as a product of your own background. Based on Dr Anthony Pickles’ fieldwork among political gamblers, we aim to hold a speculative mirror up to contemporary politics.
When you are ready, make a discretionarycharity donation, fill out a small prediction form and enter our prediction competition by dropping it into our ‘ballot box’: answer questions like how many seats will the Conservatives have after the next UK general election? Will there be a Majority in Parliament? Who will win the US Presidency? Who will prevail in the Mexican General Election? Who will control the US Senate? Birmingham and Manchester-themed prizes will be awarded to the best predictors.
Dr Anthony Pickles is Assistant Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Birmingham. He is an expert on gambling, economic anthropology and the future, and does fieldwork in Papua New Guinea and the UK.
Dr Fuad Musallam is Assistant Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Birmingham. He is a political anthropologist with research expertise in Lebanon's capital city, Beirut, where he works with Lebanese political activists challenging the political system and with migrant workers building solidarity in the face of racialised inequality.
