16.06.2025
Imagination
w/ Ruha Benjamin
On Monday, June 16, we welcomed acclaimed sociologist Ruha Benjamin to De Dépendance for a public talk on the occasion of her new book, Imagination: A Manifesto. Benjamin is Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, where she studies how emerging technologies – especially algorithms and artificial intelligence – can perpetuate inequality and reinforce racial discrimination, or be used as tools for social justice.
In her revelatory work, Benjamin calls on us to take imagination seriously as a site of struggle and a place of possibility for reshaping the future. To fight harmful systems shaped by white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, and colonialism, we must first imagine things differently. Drawing on work that critically examines tech-mediated inequities, Benjamin offers a pragmatic and poetic approach to worldbuilding—one that invites each of us to consider the role we play in maintaining or transforming the oppressive status quo. She was joined in conversation by Sennay Ghebreab, Professor of Socially Intelligent AI at the University of Amsterdam and director of the Civic AI Lab, whose work explores how artificial intelligence can be harnessed to advance social justice.
This programme was kindly supported by the Creative Industries Fund NL and the municipality of Rotterdam.