Welcome

Website under reconstruction until May 2024!

But while we make things pretty,

browse preliminary content below
find me on LinkedIn
drop a line at ceo@uncommonfuturepower.com

About Me

Hello! I'm Catherine Tan.

I'm an award-winning intellectual, writer, and ex-diplomat. I've had the privilege of bringing vibrancy and innovation to a range of social & political spaces, from grassroots communities to international organisations. My professional history has been eclectic: From inventing new eyewear shapes that reconcile visual paradox, to authoring macroeconomic strategies at an international level. At Cambridge University, I'm a legal philosopher of weird fringe things, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation through the Gates Cambridge Trust.

As a public intellectual, I like the podium, the lectern, and the seminar hall. But I also like the fast-moving world of pitches, bottled lightning, and making visions come to life. So in addition to philosophising, I'm Founder/CEO of an exciting venture called J-22: #UncommonFuturePower. J-22 is an alternative academic press house fusing Education with the Media & Entertainment industry. Taking the best of both worlds, we make knowledge accessible, entertaining, and transformative to those who encounter it. Heavy on style and graphic design, we publish knowledge in bold, creative formats -- from coffee table books depicting legal history, to children's books exploring indigenous robots, to a Netflix-style streaming service that streams Pixar-esque animated films. We posture ourselves as an edgy competitor to traditional academic press. After our #UncommonFutureMission, knowledge will never look the same way again.

Come along, stick around, and join us in rearranging what social reality looks like.

My Work

Research and Writing

I'm a Gates Scholar at Cambridge University. I investigate whether the emergence of techno-futuristic projects to settle on outer space, erect cryptodemocracies, and build seasteads on the ocean, leave a dent on international law and destabilise its philosophical foundations, or innovate it to be emancipatory. I am keen to know how 'futuristic' scales -- the oceanic, the virtual, the planetary -- stretch the sociolegal limits of the earth, and reimagine the subjecthood of the mortal humans within it.

Outside of this, my intellectual work has flown across geographies and traversed space-time with a wide wing span. But what ties it all together is a common impulse to:

Leap into avant-garde spaces, and illuminate how the mainstream can benefit from the fringe. My work takes audiences to extremes, and stress-tests how humanity fares within them. What breaks, what bends, what retains shape?

Induce personal and collective transformations by showing how our unhealed inner lives affect knowledge production. That is to say, my work takes fellow scholars to the proverbial couch, and shows that knowledge suffers when academics don't work on their emotional intelligence. This work reveals what Traditional Universities need to transform themselves.

Deconstruct technical models as if they were lego blocks, and find the hidden biases within them. Then I put the pieces back together in novel, emancipatory constellations.

I used to write literary nonfiction and fiction as well. My published works are now scattered all over Southeast Asia in textbooks, journals, and various readerships. In my teenage years, I won the Filipino equivalent of a Pulitzer Prize, among other national awards.

My style of choice used to be maximalist, detached, and satirical. But this bygone era has since evolved to something less removed, and more proximate to the loud mess and mayhem of human existence. Life is too short to embody distance; and my current work is interested in catharsis, joy, and transformation.

My Work

Public Speaking

I’ve been told that the way I write is designed to be orated to bigger publics. A linguistic shapeshifter, I’ve done a wide range of speaking gigs, from persuasive polemics to formal diplomatic debates on human rights.

Nowadays, I’m open to speaking on the following topics:

Channeling and manifesting creative power professionally

Infusing emotional intelligence into leadership positions

Building emancipatory, alternative spaces on top of existing ones

How to engage with weird fringe tech things, and the morality within them – from de-extinction, to geoengineering, to blockchain democracies

How to switch industries, careers, or disciplines with ease

How to access professional spaces that seem technical and exclusionary

I’m also a person-of-colour from the Global South, and a member of the LGBTQ+ community. Southern and queer groups, please feel free to reach out!

Welcome

Website under reconstruction until May 2024!

About Me

Hello! I'm Catherine Tan.

My Work

Research and Writing

My Work

Public Speaking

Send mail to:

Catherine DL Tan LLC

Office Hours (PDT)

Drop me a line!

Welcome

Website under reconstruction until May 2024!

About Me

Hello! I'm Catherine Tan.

My Work

Research and Writing

My Work

Public Speaking

Send mail to:

Catherine DL Tan LLC

Office Hours (PDT)

Drop me a line!

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