Jan 23 2026 to Jan 23 2026 2 p.m.

Where

Alliance Française de Bangalore

Thimmaiah Rd, opposite UNI, Kaverappa Layout, Vasanth Nagar 560052

Event Description

Futures Hubba originated as an ideas-festival at BLR Hubba, where some of the brightest national and international minds play Nostradamus to connect the dots of a likely future for humanity. It is a gathering designed to hold space for contradictions and uncertainty in this technology-shifting era, and to explore what new forms of meaning can emerge between the known and the unknown.

Futures is a space for collective imagination: it’s a space that holds tension between art and algorithm, ethics and innovation, intuition and data. It resists the safety of linear silos and instead operates at the intersections, where new ways of thinking are born from friction. Each session inside Futures is a deliberate provocation: a chance to expand what we consider knowledge, and to explore how interdisciplinary thinking might co-create more conscious futures.

The Future of Diplomacy | Philip Green | 2 PM
The death of diplomacy has been proclaimed many times: eclipsed by direct leader-to-leader engagement, an increase in open information, or the rise of non‑state actors. Yet in an increasingly contested world, diplomacy has proven not only resilient, but essential, particularly for Australia where domestic and international challenges are tightly interwoven. While the tradecraft of diplomacy has evolved to be faster, more digital, and more analytical; its fundamentals, such as value of personal relationships and deep-on‑the‑ground understanding, continue to endure. The diplomatic agenda has also widened to include technology, climate, space and the management of disinformation, which need to be supported by greater specialist expertise. Join Australian High Commissioner to India, Philip Green, for a perspective on the future of diplomacy and its continued centrality as an instrument of statecraft.

The Future Is Already Misunderstood | Riel Miller | 3 PM
Most conversations about the future are trapped in prediction, control, and nostalgia disguised as progress. In this talk, renowned futurist Riel Miller dismantles the assumption that the future is something to be forecasted or managed, and argues instead that our real blind spot is imagination itself. This session challenges participants to confront their inherited ideas of “what comes next” and reclaim the future as a practice, not a destination.

Re-Imagining Progress for a Depleted World | Navi Radjou | 4 PM
Today, the world faces three types of depletion—affecting people, places, and the planet—which are all losing their vitality. Regenerating individuals, cities, and nature at the same time calls for a new perspective on progress. Rather than being straightforwardly linear, progress is more like a circular journey where the past and future connect synergistically to address complex modern challenges. Renowned management thinker Navi Radjou will demonstrate how India can lead the way in regenerative innovation, a groundbreaking approach designed to enhance the health and vitality of people, places, and the planet together. By blending its abundant traditional wisdom with futuristic technologies, India has the potential to set an example of positive growth that unlocks human potential and benefits both society and the environment.

Feminist Futures: The Infrastructure of Equality | Kanta Singh | 5 PM
This talk contends that the next frontier of gender equality will be determined not in boardrooms or parliaments alone, but in the architecture of technology itself. Artificial intelligence, digital identity, fintech, and public data ecosystems are rapidly becoming the new gatekeepers of opportunity, yet they often replicate the very biases they claim to solve. The session examines how India can design technological systems that expand agency rather than entrench exclusion; how women can shape innovation rather than be shaped by it; and why feminist frameworks are essential for governing algorithms, capital flows, safety platforms, and care technologies. It makes the case that equitable futures require women not only participating in tech, but authoring its rules, ethics, and outcomes.

Teaching AI to Wonder: Math Meets Machine | Yang-Hui He | 6 PM
Artificial intelligence is no longer confined to crunching numbers: it is beginning to propose original theorems, sketch proofs and reveal new and unexpected patterns in the abstract world of mathematics and theoretical physics. Join Professor Yang-Hui He, one of the pioneers of AI-assisted mathematics, in exploring how AI is helping humans with new mathematical discoveries, and how in turn, we are teaching the machine how to wander and to perceive beauty.

The Architecture of Moral Imagination | Tenzin Priyadarshi Rinpoche | 7 PM
A contemplative dialogue on ethics and empathy, exploring the moral frameworks that may shape the age of AI.

Resonant Futures: 432 Hz | Transmedia Performance by Murthovic x Thiruda | 8 PM
432_Hz: Resonant Futures is an immersive audiovisual journey into a future India where all forms of communication—digital, emotional, biological, environmental—are conducted through harmonic resonance. Set in the year 2069, when electromagnetic signals have given way to vibrational networks rooted in ancient Indian sonic traditions, the performance brings together modular synths, generative visuals, AI-processed music, and speculative world-building to conjure a live cinema experience that blends mythology, futurism, and ecology. In this future, communication is no longer transmitted—it is felt. From the humming of banyan trees to the pulse of Himalayan resonance towers, the Indian subcontinent becomes a “Nada Web”: a landscape of vibratory sentience.

About BIC Elsewhere:

While the majority of our events find a home at our premises in Domlur, BIC Elsewhere represents our commitment to bringing conversations, arts, and culture directly to diverse audiences. Through this initiative, we collaborate with various venues, extending the reach of our events beyond our own space. These partnerships not only breathe life into our gatherings but also play a crucial role in cultivating an environment for the flourishing of arts and culture in the city.

In collaboration with:

Speakers & Performers

Philip Green
Australian High Commissioner
High Commissioner Philip Green is an Australian diplomat with experience across four continents, having served as Ambassador or High Commissioner to Germany, Singapore, South Africa and Kenya. His career highlights include oversight of the implementation of Australia’s Indo-Pacific Strategy following its launch in 2017; lead responsibility for the development of Australia’s policy on the Quad from 2017 to 2019; piloting the conclusion of the Enhanced Strategic Partnership with Germany and the Australia–Germany Hydrogen Accord in 2021; and the conclusion of Australia’s Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with Singapore in 2016, alongside the upgrade of the Australia–Singapore Free Trade Agreement in the same year. He also served as International Adviser to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd from 2009 to 2010 and as Chief of Staff to Foreign Minister Rudd from 2010 to 2012. Mr Green was awarded the Order of Australia Medal for his role in the response to the Bali terrorist tragedy in 2002.

Riel Miller
Economist, Former Head of Foresight and Futures Literacy, UNESCO
Riel Miller is one of the world’s foremost authorities on Futures Literacy: the capacity to understand and use the future as a resource for imagination, innovation, and cultural transformation. An economist by training, he has led groundbreaking foresight work for over four decades across governments, global institutions, and corporations.

He served as Head of Foresight and Futures Literacy at UNESCO from 2012–2022 and is currently a Senior Fellow at multiple institutions, including École des Ponts Business School, University of New Brunswick, NIFU, University of the Witwatersrand, Future Africa at the University of Pretoria, and East China Normal University. Miller has designed hundreds of applied foresight projects internationally and is widely published on the future of technology, education, governance, and culture.

Navi Radjou
Regenerative Futurist
Navi Radjou is a French-American innovation and leadership scholar. Since 2021, Navi is ranked by Thinkers50 as one of the 50 most influential and forward-thinking management thinkers in the world. He is co-author of three books: the global bestseller Jugaad Innovation (over 250,000 copies sold), Frugal Innovation, and From Smart To Wise: Acting and Leading with Wisdom. His new book The Frugal Economy: A Guide to Building a Better World with Less, published in 2024 by Wiley and Thinkers50, shows how businesses and nations can generate inclusive growth and maximize citizens’ well-being within planetary boundaries.

This conversation will be moderated by Jacob Rasmussen, a Danish anthropologist based at Roskilde University. He specialises in Global and Development Studies, with a particular focus on urban politics. His recent research includes projects related to sustainable urban wastewater management, question of citizenship in smart cities development, and alternative political and economic organization around commoning and degrowth. These projects have a common interest in how we imagine, organise, build, and govern for a common future in sustainable and inclusive ways that works across traditional global and social divides.

Kanta Singh
UN Women India
Kanta Singh is the Country Representative a.i. at UN Women India, bringing over 25 years of experience advancing gender equality, women’s economic empowerment, and rights-based development across India. She has led strategic programmes with national and international organisations aimed at expanding women’s participation in the formal economy, securing access to justice and economic rights, and strengthening gender-responsive policies. Prior to her current role, she served in senior capacities at UNDP India, where she managed initiatives focused on employment, entrepreneurship, and inclusion for women and girls. A former national-level volleyball player, she is also a Chevening Gurukul Fellow from the University of Oxford and holds an MSc in Rural Sociology. Her work bridges grassroots insight and policy leadership to design sustainable solutions that expand opportunity and agency for women throughout India.

Yang-Hui He
Mathematical Physicist
Professor Yang-Hui He is a Fellow at the London Institute for Mathematical Sciences and Tutor in mathematics at Merton College, University of Oxford. After his BA summa cum laude in Princeton, his MA with distinction from Cambridge, and PhD in MIT, he joined Oxford as the FitzJames Fellow and an STFC Advanced Fellow. He works on the interface between geometry, number theory and string theory. In 2017, he helped launch the emerging field of AI-guided mathematical discovery, where he continues to play a leading role.

Tenzin Priyadarshi Rinpoche
Philosopher, Educator & CEO, The Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values, MIT
Philosopher, Educator and a Polymath Monk, The Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi Rinpoche is President & CEO of The Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a center dedicated to inquiry, dialogue, and education on the ethical and humane dimensions of life. The Center is a collaborative and nonpartisan think-and-do tank, with programs that emphasize responsibility and examine meaningfulness and moral purpose between individuals, organizations, and societies.

Venerable Tenzin’s unusual background encompasses entering a Buddhist monastery at the age of ten and receiving graduate education at Harvard University with degrees ranging from philosophy to physics to international relations.  He serves as a Visiting Professor and Principal Researcher at International College of Innovation, National Chengchi University in Taiwan and Chiba Institute of Technology in Japan and is a Senior Fellow at Research Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology.

Murthovic x Thiruda | Elsewhere in India
Musician & Transmedia Artist
Murthovic and Thiruda are pioneering Indian transmedia artists who have been at the forefront of the country’s electronic music and new media art scene for over two decades. With a shared passion for pushing the boundaries of digital storytelling and cultural preservation, they have collaborated on numerous projects that blend cutting-edge technology with traditional Indian aesthetics and narratives.