The Mannheim Manifesto
The Mannheim Manifesto is an ambitious and urgent intellectual initiative addressing the foundational questions of human knowledge in the twenty-first century. GRTL Alliance Members Prof. Ratkovic (University of Mannheim), Dr. Abdul Rahman (University of Mannheim) and Prof. Ann Kristin Glenster (University of Cambridge) are driving this initiative in response to these challenging times where we are witnessing profound technological transformation, geopolitical instability, and epistemic uncertainty.
From November 25–27, leading scholars and public intellectuals will convene near Mannheim to draft Human Knowledge for a New Technological Age: a manifesto grounded in centuries of human intellectual tradition, yet oriented towards an unprecedented future shaped by artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and neurotechnologies. The Mannheim Manifesto will articulate a set of fundamental questions and principles to guide how we understand, safeguard, and cultivate human episteme and flourishing in the face of rapidly evolving technological power.
The inaugural convening will bring together twenty-five leading intellectuals, drawn predominantly from academia, for an intensive two-day retreat in the vineyards close to Mannheim. Conceived as a fully in-person encounter, the gathering will create a space away from the constant demands of a digitally mediated life. In an age in which knowledge is increasingly produced, circulated, and contested through fragmented and accelerated channels, the Manifesto begins from the premise that sustained intellectual work requires our presence and full attention in a shared environment.
Through plenary discussions and focused working sessions, participants will jointly articulate the central epistemic challenges of our time especially vis-a-vis AI, and begin the collective drafting of the Manifesto. In doing so, this first convening will not merely initiate a document, but reassert a mode of intellectual engagement grounded in depth, deliberation, and the possibility of genuine common understanding.
At its core, the Mannheim Manifesto is animated by a recognition that the conditions under which human knowledge is formed, shared, and sustained are undergoing profound transformation. To protect human episteme is not simply to preserve access to information, but to safeguard the deeper capacities of attention, judgement, interpretation, and understanding that make knowledge possible. As technological systems increasingly shape what is knowable, how it is mediated, and who is authorized to know, the question of epistemic protection becomes inseparable from the question of human freedom and flourishing itself. The Manifesto therefore seeks to articulate not only the risks we face amidst the current narratives around AI, but also the principles and commitments required to ensure that human beings remain the authors—rather than the subjects—of their own intellectual and epistemic worlds.
In terms of policy impact, we are planning to bring the Mannheim Manifesto to London (Chatham House and the Royal Society of Arts) and Berlin (Bundestag and the federal government of Germany) to meet with policy makers. We are also planning to hold a summit next year with a broader audience.
The initiative and convening are organized by:
