WHAT'S ON
Full List
Get together before the summer holidays for our legendary annual party! Sunshine, good company.
Bring a friend or two – the more, the merrier. It will be a lovely, memorable night, so be sure not to miss it!
Launch Party | Season 14
2026-27
SEASON LAUNCH | Fri 11th Sept | 7pm
Welcome to a brand-new Season!
Let this one inspire you with its vibrant mix of thinkers, doers, authors, activists, artists, musicians, and more. We're unveiling our exciting new programme and introducing some of the brilliant hosts behind your favourite regular activities.
Come for a drink and a tasty bite, meet some new faces and soak up the warm, welcoming vibe of our place and community.
Not a member yet? No worries — you can join right there on the night!
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Attendance is FREE, but please register.
FREE drinks for Members in the 1st hour.
OPEN TO ALL
ADDITIONAL INFO
ACCESS
Bar open with snacks
Understanding Our Rights and Protections Online: The EU's Digital Services Act
with Maria Koomen & Cindy Zheng Ideas / Action | New date coming soon
with Maria Koomen & Cindy Zheng
Ideas / Action | New date coming soon
*Act On sessions offer quarterly action-oriented get-togethers that go beyond discussion. Experts and general public share the willingness to take action.
The internet shapes how we access information, organise, and participate in public life — but who is actually responsible for what happens on digital platforms, and what rights do we have as users? The EU's Digital Services Act (DSA) is one of the most significant pieces of online regulation in a generation, yet what do we really know about what it means in practice?
This Act on Democracy session brings together two experts to help us understand the DSA: what it does, what it doesn't do, and what citizens, civil society and advocates can do to make it work better for democracy.
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Maria Koomen is a Democracy, governance & tech analyst and advocacy specialist. She is the former governance director at the Centre for Future Generations, working on the challenges at the intersection of emerging technologies, democracy, and governance. Her work focused on ensuring that governance systems evolve to keep pace with technological and societal change. Maria led the Open Governance Network for Europe, a joint initiative of Open Government Partnership and Democratic Society to drive connection, dialogue, and learning around public participation, transparency, and accountability with an eye to improving democracy and governance in and across the European Union. Prior to that Maria was senior programme manager on the Democracy Conflict & Governance program at the Carnegie Europe.
Cindy Zheng is a young professional engaged in digital policy. She previously worked in digital transformation in the area of EU projects, development cooperation, and global governance, with the aim to contribute to a more responsible and human-centred digital future.
Bar & snacks
Can we Make Climate Great Again? Amnesty International (hosted event)
Ideas | Thurs 17th Sept | 7-8.30pm
(Doors open 6.30pm)
Had a sweltering summer? Climate change may be front of mind, albeit temporarily. But authorities (International, regional & national) are not acting urgently or comprehensively enough.
We are already +1.5°c warmer, with +2°c expected by the end of this century. This is a planetary and human rights catastrophe.
Before your attention shifts, get updated on the latest in the transition away from fossil fuels, from actors at the coal-face of climate justice.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Matthias Petel, researcher & lecturer in Human rights law and climate justice, (ULB) has been working closely on the Farmer Case (Falys v. TotalEnergies).
Charles Mertens, climate justice campaigner at Amnesty International Belgique francophone (AIBF)
International Peace Brigades, climate defender from West Papua
Oil Change International (speaker to be confirmed)
Benjamin van Bunderen, founder Climate justice for Rosa
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai
Culture | Thurs 17th Sept | 7:00-8:30 pm
Monthly meet up to discuss a great read, along with drinks & good company.
*Doors open at 6.30pm. The book club begins at 7pm.
“A sweeping page-turner [...] a kind of Romeo and Juliet story for a modern, globalized age.” —Publishers Weekly
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kiran Desai is an Indian writer and the bestselling author of three novels, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard and The Inheritance of Loss, which won both the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award. The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is her latest work of fiction, shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize. The judges described the novel as an epic of love and family, spanning generations and countries, that is the most "ambitious and accomplished" work by Desai. Born in India, she moved to the US when she was sixteen and now lives in New York City. In January 2015, The Economic Times listed her as one of 20 most influential global Indian women.
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Social | Sat 19th Sep | 3-5 pm
Curious about Full Circle? Join us for a drink & discover what we're all about.
Whether you're already part of our community or simply intrigued, you’ll have the opportunity to meet the team, explore the house & hear more about our future plans – including what the different types of Full Circle memberships have to offer. It’s a relaxed & informal setting, ideal for asking questions & seeing if this is a place where you feel at home.
We warmly welcome current members & their guests too – so feel free to bring a friend or two along. It's a lovely way to connect with others who share a curiosity for ideas, culture & community. No pressure, just good company & a great conversation.
We're looking forward to welcoming you!
Book Launch / Sat 19th Sept / 5-7 pm
As a Palestinian woman who grew up in Israel, Eva Dalak's personal story is woven with the collective wounds of conflict, displacement, and inherited pain. Her memoir of transformation, Dancing in the Dark, is an exceptional, powerful journey through loss, identity and the reclamation of light in the face of darkness.
Eva does not just share a testimony of survival, but a profound exploration of healing. As she even lost her vision for two years, she had to navigate physical blindness alongside the unseen landscapes of trauma, belonging and ancestral memory. With honesty and poetic grace, she traces her path from disorientation to clarity, from fragmentation to wholeness.
She also introduces her Peace Activation framework, through which she weaves trauma-informed practices, intergenerational dialogue and embodied resilience into a new way forward - for individuals as well as for communities and nations caught in cycles of violence.
What if the reason we struggle to create lasting peace isn't what we think? What if our most well-crafted peace agreements fail not because we lack good intentions, but because we're missing something fundamental? Come hear Eva's powerful testimony of awakening, begin to see with new eyes and discover how to activate peace as a lived experience.
Eva Dalak is an Israeli Palestinian peacebuilder and peace activator with over 25 years of experience in conflict transformation. She is the founder of Peace Activation and co-founder of One Whole Peace, both soul-centred peace movements in Palestine and Israel bringing citizens of different faiths together in conflict transformation. She is passionate about activating peace, promoting gender equality, interfaith dialogue, and empowering communities to build peace from within. As a skilled conflict transformation facilitator, peacebuilding trainer, and gender advisor, Eva has amassed experience in over 22 countries in conflict zones across Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. She is committed to promoting individual soul-centred leadership and radical responsibility through innovative and entrepreneurial initiatives.
GOODREADS
Dancing in the Dark, How I found my True Vision for Peace (2025).
Double workshop:
Narrative Mapping for Political Strategy & Creative Storytelling in the Attention Age
Future Narratives Lab: Sarah Stein Lubrano & Dan Stanley
WORK | Wed 23rd Sept | 10am-1pm & 2pm-5pm
For professionals in political & communications strategy Places are limited. Book early.
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Narrative Mapping for Political Strategy (morning)
In order to challenge harmful political ideas and systems, from carbon emitting industries to increasingly authoritarian governments, it’s crucial to shift public understanding and common sense. And to do that, NGOs, governmental bodies, and others need to first understand why prevailing narratives maintain their power and appeal. Only then does it become possible to strategically select and design interventions (from media-led campaigns to embedded community practices) that will be sufficiently powerful and appealing to change the political landscape for good.
In this session, we’ll share our expertise about how best to do this, building on years of experience working with coalitions and progressive institutions across the world. Together, we’ll map dominant societal narratives that keep our imagination and action trapped in a limited spectrum of possibilities, and tracing the institutions, practices, and policies that make narratives powerful.
In this workshop, we will:
Creative Storytelling in the Attention Age (afternoon)
In this session, we’ll sharpen our storytelling skills, with the help of tools and frameworks that can guide and inspire us. And we’ll consider how to make the age-old power of a story work in the age of fragmented political soundbites and the shortest of short-form video.
We will:
PARTICIPANTS
The workshops Narrative Mapping for Political Strategy and Creative Storytelling in the Attention Age are for all professionals working towards reframing a key social issue, or want to communicate more strategically or creatively about an important problem, on or offline.
If you are working in a governmental or nongovernmental organisation that is struggling to cut through the noise on a particular topic, this is designed with you in mind.
ABOUT THE HOSTS
Future Narratives Lab is a democratically owned and controlled non-profit that exists to build the independent cultural and political power of civil society. Based in London, their team works across Europe and beyond, typically through partnerships with groups working on entrenched and complex social challenges. Future Narrative Lab equips campaigners, coalitions and communities with narrative as a tool for building their collective power.
Sarah Stein Lubrano is a researcher, author and broadcaster. Her academic research has focused on the role of emotion in political communication, and specifically cognitive dissonance. Lubrano is the head of research for the Future Narratives Lab. For many years she was the head of content at The School of Life, where she is still a content lead. She writes and speaks publicly on a variety of topics. In earlier lives, Lubrano made films and worked as a prison tutor and obituary writer.
Dan Stanley is Executive Director at non-profit research body the Future Narratives Lab, and Strategy Director at economic development co-operative Stir to Action. Daniel has worked with campaigns, coalitions, foundations and political parties in the UK and globally to develop strategies for broadening the appeal of alternative social and economic propositions, including seven years leading digital mobilisation agency Small Axe.
TICKETS
MEMBERS Sngle workshop (am or pm) €200 Double workshop (full day) €400
NON-MEMBERS Single workshop (am or pm) €225 Double workshop (full day) €400
INCLUSIVITY / DONATION RATE - waiting list. Any available places will be allocated to those on the waiting list before the event.
KEY LINKS
Future Narratives Lab
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FOOD & DRINK
Refreshments provided. Lunch available
A news commentary with
James Kanter & guests
Ideas / Wed 23rd Sept / 6.30-8.30pm
Live & On the Record: A Podcast with James Kanter
Europe’s news is loud and moving fast. What’s Behind the News keeps up and cuts through the noise. Come join veteran Brussels journalist James Kanter and a stellar cast of journalists and reporters who break through the clutter and help make sense of it.
From EU power plays, to the stories that shaped the week and the ones that slipped past the front page, come hear what's really going on behind the headlines.
This is journalism doing what it's supposed to do: telling it as it is. Unfiltered and live in front of you. Join us and dig into the stories defining Europe right now.
James Kanter is an American and British award-winning journalist and Brussels-based commentator on EU affairs. Previously at Herald Tribune and The New York Times. He's co-founder and editor of the Podcast EU Scream.
Guests to be announced soon
Ideas / Salon | Thurs 24th Sept | 6.30-8.30 pm
*Doors open at 6.30pm. The speaker will start at 7pm.
Not a Member yet? Join Full Circle now & come to events at the Members' rate!
Who really rules the world we live in? Not governments. Not voters. According to award-winning economist Cecilia Rikap, it's a small cluster of cloud hegemons (Amazon, Microsoft, Google) whose intellectual monopolies over knowledge, data and narratives now shape global capitalism itself.
Rikap reveals how even giants like Disney, McDonald's, Nike and Walmart depend on these tech rulers to extract value through AI and discipline their own workforces. States, too, are watching core functions slip from their hands. Innovation, in this telling, is not a free and neutral game - it's a hierarchy, and someone is always at the top of it.
To get there, Rikap went straight to the source: 112 interviews with people inside the world's largest firms, combined with hard data on venture capital, acquisitions, open source, AI conferences and patents - piecing together a vivid map of who holds power today and what's at stake.
However, this is not a story without an exit. Rikap's counterimage insists technology can still be developed by the people, for the people and the planet, through democratic planning rather than predatory concentration.
Come hear how we got here and how we might take the cloud back.
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Cecilia Rikap is an award winning economist and currently Head of Research and Associate Professor in Economics at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP). She is also a researcher at the CONICET, Argentina's national research council and a researcher at University of Technology of Compiègne. Her research is rooted in the international political economy of science and technology and the economics of innovation. She currently studies the rising concentration of intangible assets leading to the emergence of intellectual monopolies, among others from digital and pharma industries, the distribution of intellectual rents, resulting geopolitical tensions and the effects of knowledge assetisation on the knowledge commons and development.
The Rulers, Corporate Power in the Age of AI and the Cloud (2026); Capitalism, Power and Innovation: Intellectual Monopoly Capitalism Uncovered (2021); The Digital Innovation Race: Conceptualising the Emerging New World Order (2021).
We only have 120 tickets and we always sell out!!
It's time to dust off your dancing shoes and join a traditional Scottish ceilidh.
No previous experience or dancing skills required - the band will be calling out the steps as we go along. If you're a ceilidh regular then you know how much fun it is!
Bring your friends or come along but please, no spikey heels on our rather beautiful wooden floor.
* 7.30pm doors open - bar snacks available
* 8.00pm start dancing!
* 10.30pm Band finishes
*TICKET INCLUDES 1 DRINK (BEER, WINE OR SOFT)
BAR SNACKS AVAILABLE ALL EVENING
Bar & light food
The Hoggies are the original Brussels-based Scottish ceilidh band.
GEOPOLITICAL SHIFTS AT EUROPE'S EDGES
Salon / Ideas | Tues 6 Oct | 6.30-8.30pm
Long before Putin's invasion of Ukraine, conflict was simmering on Europe's borders. Why have Russian resorts sprung up on the coast of Northern Cyprus? What does Sarajevo's local politics reveal about the ambitions of Trump, Putin, and Erdoğan? these questions were already being written into the map, In overlooked territories in eastern Europe, the eastern Mediterranean and the Caucasus, where local disputes spiral into regional crises, global alliances are forged and broken, and power is brokered while the West looks elsewhere.
It is in these overlooked borderlands that empires end, new conflicts begin, and where Europe's future may be decided.
From the Balkans to the Caucasus, Cyprus to Nagorno-Karabakh, acclaimed correspondent and Pulitzer grantee Hannah Lucinda Smith has spent years in Eurasia's grey zones, meeting the politicians, spies, and ordinary people caught where local disputes quietly become global reckonings.
Join us for an intimate conversation with one of the most incisive voices writing on the borderlands today. Hannah brings the sharp reportage we need to understand contemporary Europe and its unfinished frontiers.
Hannah Lucinda Smith is a journalist and author. As foreign correspondent she has been reporting for major global publications including The Economist, The Times of London, BBC and Monocle, From 2013 to 2025 she has been based in Turkey, reporting across the Middle East and Europe for The Times of London, The Atlantic, WIRED, and others. Before Hinterlands she has also authored Erdogan Rising, an account of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's rise to power, and Zarifa, the memoir of Afghan human rights activist Zarifa Ghafari.
GOOD READS
Hinterlands: Journey's through Europe's edges (2026); Zarifa, A woman's battle in a man's world (2022); Erdogan Rising: The Battle for the Soul of Turkey (2019).
The Nights Are Quiet in Teheran by Shida Bazyar
Culture | Thurs 15th Oct | 7:00-8:30 pm
‘The pages … pulse with solidarities and betrayal, with heartache and humor.” ― the judges of The International Booker Prize 2026
Set across four decades, from 1979 to 2009, this is a polyphonic novel of one family’s flight from and return to Iran. It is about revolution, oppression, resistance, and the absolute desire for freedom.
1979. Behzad, a young communist revolutionary, fights with his friends for a new order after the Shah’s expulsion. He tells of sparking hope, of clandestine political actions, and of how he finds the love of his life in the courageous, intelligent Nahid.
1989. Nahid lives her new life in West Germany with Behzad. With their young children, they spend hour after hour in front of the radio, hoping for news from others who went into hiding after the mullahs came to power.
1999. Laleh returns to Iran with her mother, Nahid. Between beauty rituals and family secrets, she gets to know a Tehran that hardly matches her childhood memories.
2009. Laleh’s brother Mo is more concerned with a friend’s heartbreak than with student demonstrations in Germany. But then the Green Revolution breaks out in Iran and turns the world upside down.
Shida Bazyar studied writing in Germany, and worked in youth education for many years. Born in 1988, she is the author of the novels The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran and Sisters in Arms. The Nights Are Quiet in Tehran has won the Blogger Literary Award, Ulla Hahn Prize, and Uwe Johnson Prize. The English translation was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2026.
She Who Remains by Rene Karabash
Culture | Thurs 12th Nov | 7:00-8:30 pm
High in the Accursed Mountains, in an Albanian village ruled by the ancient laws of the Kanun, Bekja escapes an arranged marriage by becoming a sworn virgin, renouncing her womanhood to live as a man. Her decision sets off a brutal chain of events, destroying her family and separating her from the one she loves the most. Years later, as Bekija – now Matija – tells their story to a visiting journalist, long-buried truths come to light, along with the realisation of all that might have been.
She Who Remains - a dark and poetic novel about identity, gender, love, freedom, and societal norms - was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2026.
Rene Karabash (born Irena Ivanova) is a Bulgarian poet, writer, screenwriter, actor and playwright. She has won multiple awards for her work, including several Best Actress awards for her role in the film Godless. Her debut novel, She Who Remains, was awarded the 2019 Elias Canetti Prize, Bulgaria’s most prestigious literary award. It has been translated into over a dozen languages, and a film, adapted by the author, is set to be released in 2026. The English language edition was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2026. Karabash is also the author of the collection Omar’s Letters to His Future Wife, and is working on her second novel.
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