In a sold-out Roadrunner’s Paradise Club, members of the participating research centres captivated the audience with intriguing tales of colourfully illuminated neurons, learning robots that turn into teaching robots and a smart pieces of rubber capable of tenderly gingerly picking up a cookies.

EXC 2020 was represented by our co-director Andrew James Johnston, whose performance linked the Franks Casket, an intricately carved early medieval chest made of whale's bone, to the modern penchant for clear and unequivocal attributions of identity: As a closer look at the artefact and its creators reveals, the entanglements of things are often much more complex than a simple logic of 'either/or' would allow.

Inside scoop: Rumour has it that Professor Johnston spent months rehearsing his slapstick interludes!