Co-Creating a Thriving Future:
​An Alchemy of Belief and Choice 
June 28-July 5, 2026 on​ Star Island, NH

2026 Call for Papers

Conference Speakers

To come.

Have more questions?

2026 IRAS ​Conference Statement

How can we best support healthy ecosystems and robust social systems? What alchemy will it take for the interdependent web of life on earth to thrive? As individuals, communities, and nations, humans have caused planetary ills, from hunger to habitat destruction to wars - and have created supportive systems, life-saving technologies, and artistic masterpieces. At this time, when changes occur swiftly and simultaneously, often with repercussions that stretch across the globe, decision making can sometimes feel dizzying. How do we choose the best paths forward? How do we know where to start?

​The ways we perceive our relationships to our environment, which are at once deeply personal and profoundly cultural, determine our responses to it. Actions stem from beliefs and biases, some of which we may not be aware of. This conference aims to empower participants to experience shifts in perception which may help us respond nimbly to emergent needs and increase our ability to bend the arc of the future toward sustaining life, through:
  • Perspectives from cognitive science, anthropology, and sociology, which offer frameworks to consider human learning, belief formation, and their influence on social behaviors in personal and societal contexts;
  • Collaborative engagement with futurist methodologies, including speculative storytelling, design thinking exercises, and role-playing;
  • Perspectives and practices from spiritual and religious traditions, offering frameworks to engage with, challenge, and embrace or change our deeply held understandings and responses.
 These perspectives and methodologies will provide participants with opportunities to examine how our most ingrained personal beliefs influence our shared reality and future. Individually and collaboratively, our challenge is to acknowledge our co-existing powers of destruction and creation, and to reframe our understandings in ways that favor life-affirming choices, rather than dysfunction or destruction, in decisions large and small.
Conference program co-chairs: 
Patrice Curtis and Jennifer Whitten

Watch for regular updates in the coming months.
Copyright by The Institute on Religion in an Age of Science