Experimental Governance in the Wild

​​This session is part of the Introduction to Political Technology course at Newspeak House, open to faculty and fellowship candidates only.

​This lecture explores real-world experiments in social innovation. We will discuss prefiguration, transfer cultures, communes, and examples of social experimentation.

​Dr Zarinah Agnew is a neuroscientist by training. After spending over a decade in academia, they left to study the science of groups of brains - that is, humans in collectivity. Alongside their work with the college, Zarinah is Director of Research at the Collective Intelligence Project, which works to direct technological development towards the collective good.

​On the side, Zarinah also runs three nonprofits aimed at experimental aspects of society, collective transformation and para-institutions. The Social Science Observatory is dedicated to the study of social science in the wild, Alternative Justices works towards abolitionist community-based harm prevention and response, and District Commons engineers experimental spaces where humans can ‘be otherwise’.

​Together, these strands allow both the prefiguration of new social configurations, as well as the study of their transformational potential.