1 All Booked All Booked All Booked 28813 LOCAL EVENT:C.S. Lewis Symposium (Belfast) 9:00AM-8:00PM GMT https://www.cslewisinstitute.org/?event=local-eventc-s-lewis-symposium-belfast-900am-800pm-gmt&event_date=2026-11-16&reg=1 https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr 2026-11-16

LOCAL EVENT:C.S. Lewis Symposium (Belfast) 9:00AM-8:00PM GMT


  • Symposium
Register 2026-11-16 09:00 2026-11-16 20:00 America/New_York LOCAL EVENT:C.S. Lewis Symposium (Belfast) 9:00AM-8:00PM GMT

This symposium will evaluate the prescience of Lewis’s warnings, especially in his Cosmic Trilogy, and in The Abolition of Man.

Union Theological College, 108 Botanic Avenue, Belfast BT7 1JT, United Kingdom n.jewhurst@cslewisinstitute.org

CSLI Belfast presents

C.S. Lewis Symposium

with  Reverend Dr. Malcolm Guite and Dr. Michael Ward

Babel, Broken Worlds & The Abolition of Man:
C.S. Lewis’s Cosmic Trilogy as Prophetic Warning to the West

Acclaimed science fiction writer J.G. Ballard once said that the task of the science fiction writer is to look just around the corner into the future to see what is coming and to warn his fellows.

In this respect, the genre bears an unmistakable relationship to prophecy. Therefore, one could regard the science fiction writings of C.S. Lewis as a species of prophetic utterance.

This symposium will evaluate the prescience of Lewis’s warnings—in his Cosmic Trilogy, and in The Abolition of Man, specifically, but also in his work more broadly—in the light of 20th and 21st century innovations in philosophy, education, science, and technology. We invite scholars of all levels and from all fields to explore any aspect of this topic in a manner suited to their own research interests.

Abstracts of 250 words, accompanied by a brief bio, can be submitted to Dr Curtis White and Professor John Gillespie at symposium@cslewisinstitute.org from 1st March to 1st July 2026.

Dates: Monday, 16th November 2026
Speaker: Dr. Michael Ward, Reverend & Dr. Malcolm Guite
Time: 9:00 am - 8:00 pm GMT
Location: Union Theological College | 108 Botanic Avenue, Belfast BT7 1JT United Kingdom
Cost: £175.00

We are delighted to release tickets for C.S. Lewis Symposium Belfast 2026! Below is some information about our renowned keynote speakers, Rev Dr Malcolm Guite and Dr Michael Ward.


Malcolm Guite

Malcolm Guite, Author, is a Life Fellow of Girton College, Cambridge, and writes the weekly Poet’s Corner column for the Church Times. He is the author of several books including Mariner: A voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Love Remember: 40 poems of loss, lament and hope, and David’s Crown: Sounding the Psalms. Guite earned degrees from Cambridge and Durham universities. His research interests include the intersection of religion and the arts, and the examination of the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, and British poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He was a Bye-Fellow and chaplain of Girton College, Cambridge and associate chaplain of St Edward King and Martyr in Cambridge.

 

Michael Ward

Michael Ward is a member of the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford and Professor of Apologetics at Houston Baptist University. He studied English at the University of Oxford, theology at the University of Cambridge, and he earned his PhD in Divinity at the University of St. Andrews. He is the author and editor of multiple books, most notably the award-winning Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C.S. Lewis, After Humanity: A Guide to C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man and The Cambridge Companion to C.S. Lewis. On the fiftieth anniversary of Lewis’s death, Dr. Ward unveiled a permanent national memorial to Lewis in Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey, London.

The Schedule

9:00 am - 9:00 pm Symposium