Tag: futures

Are we even talking about tomorrow? at UCL Languages of the Future

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I’m speaking at the UCL Languages of the Future conference on 6th June, presenting a paper titled “Are we even talking about tomorrow? Uncertainty, agency, and the encounter with the sublime”.

The event brings together contributors from across academia and broader society to think through the complex relationships between languages and times to come. We’ve been given a few big questions to chew on, like: How can “languages of the future” encapsulate specific individual disciplines, embrace diverse knowledge systems, convey the urgency of problems that are yet to arise, and honour the voices of the more-than-human world?

I’ll be standing on the shoulders of thinkers like UCL’s Richard Sandford to explore uncertainty, agency, and the “thick present”: an understanding of the here-and-now encompassing remembrance and anticipation. As Rafael Ramírez and Angela Wilkinson have it,

The future is always an aspect of the present. The future has not “taken place,” but the present always “holds” the future, and holds it as potential. Indeed, the future is never “later,” is it always (experienced, imagined) “now.”

Droplets hanging from a leaf in close up. The image is titled WHAT MIGHT TRANSPIRE? and includes a quotation from Sandford 2023: 'It is precisely action that makes the present thick. Pursuing the ends that we have demands that we weave together pasts, presents, and futures, producing the thick present through the exercise of our agency.'

“Portraits of queer futurity” at National Portrait Gallery, Canberra

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Where do we find the limits of identity and desire? What secret possibilities of thinking the world anew exist in quiet suburbs, remote farmsteads, Olympic pools, and the farthest reaches of time and space?

Join me next month for a special online virtual tour of Australia’s National Portrait Gallery, exploring portraits that offer different gateways to worlds beyond, blending past, present and future.

‘The future is queerness’s domain. Queerness … allows us to see and feel beyond the quagmire of the present.’ – José Esteban Muñoz

By Wikimedia user Thennicke – CC BY-SA 4.0

X365: The Graphic Novel, by Neill Cameron

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In early 2020, acclaimed comic creator Neill Cameron began to write and draw the one-panel-a-day comic X365: “No plan going in, no preparation. I’d just make a story up and see where it took me.”

When the pandemic hit, it reshaped the tale Neill was telling, of parallel worlds entwined.

The full story is now being produced in a collected edition on Kickstarter, including an interview I conducted with Neill about the project as it reached its conclusion.

See more at the Kickstarter project page for X365: The Graphic Novel.

IMAJINE: The Future of Food

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What do IMAJINE‘s scenarios for the future of European regional inequality imply for how Europe feeds itself in times to come?

Regional dynamics affect, and are affected by, the agrifood sector and its vital supply chains. Questions of environmental sustainability, logistics, health, and lifestyle are all entwined.

In the IMAJINE project’s latest expert response, Singaporean futurist Luke Tay explores IMAJINE’s four scenarios for Europe in 2048 from a food futures perspective.

Facing the Strategic Sublime: Scenario Planning as Gothic Narrative

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Marie Mahon of NUI Galway and I are in Vector with a new piece taking a literary approach to strategy, scenarios, and foresight.

In “Facing the Strategic Sublime: Scenario Planning as Gothic Narrative“, we investigate how constructing plausible future scenarios can help people to test their assumptions, suspend preconceptions, and engage with issues and information that they had previously framed out of consideration.

In doing this, we argue, scenarios are akin to Gothic literature, offering what Leila Taylor calls “a means of working through the discomfort of a changing world through the safety of fiction”.

Treating scenarios in this way “restores both our humility with regard to external forces that may seem almost unbearable to face, & the troubling sense that our own desires may not be pure or uncomplicated…”

See more at the Vector website.

SHAPE Education: Schools, Work, and the Adaptation Advantage

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The archive from this summer’s SHAPE Education event, organised by Cambridge University Press and the Judge Business School, is now online.

I spoke on the future of work and its implications for education with a panel including Bell Education’s Silvana Richardson, Cambridge University Press’ own Ben Knight, and Heather E. McGowan, author of The Adaptation Advantage.

We were also supported by live drawings from the brilliant Rebecca Osborne.

SHAPE Education: Matt Finch's talk

You can find more about the SHAPE conference series online, and explore the University of Oslo “Schools and/or Screens” scenarios, which I discussed during the panel, here.

Reimagining the future of urban-rural balance

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How will Europe’s urban-rural balance shift in years to come? In times of uncertainty, when tomorrow may not look like today, how can researchers and decision-makers best explore future relationships and dynamics between regions? In addition, how can such speculations be related back to pressing questions in the here and now?

In the new issue of the Regional Studies Association’s online magazine, IMAJINE‘s Marie Mahon and I share our experiences using scenario planning to explore the future of regional development in Europe, and answer the question: why are serious researchers spending time dreaming of futures which may never happen?

Read more in our article, “Reimagining the future of urban-rural balance: using scenarios to explore territorial inequality”.

Tales of the times to come: the humanities and scenario planning

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“What do the humanities have to offer strategists, policymakers, and decision-takers in the age of the algorithm? As machine intelligence and computational power increase, as we gather ever more data from ever more sources, do the humanities still offer a valuable perspective on times yet to come?”

Over at the website of the Irish Humanities Alliance, Marie Mahon and I have a piece on what our training in the humanities has brought to our work on the IMAJINE project for the future of European regional inequality.

Incoming Storm – Galway, Ireland – August 11, 2008, Wikimedia Commons

SHAPE Education: Schooling, Skills, and the Future of Work

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I’ll be speaking at the SHAPE Education 2021 conference on Wednesday 14th July, joining the panel “What will individuals need to learn for success in work and life in the future?” alongside Heather E. McGowan and Silvana Richardson.

We’ll be asking, what skills, knowledge and characteristics will employers need and be looking for in future? How will education systems help people develop these within and beyond schools? And will relationships between schools and employers change?

You can join our panel, and other sessions from the week-long SHAPE event, for free.

RCOT 2021: Scenarios, foresight, and occupational therapy

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Next week, Griffith University’s Professor Matthew Molineux and I present on scenario planning for the 2021 conference of the Royal College of Occupational Therapists.

In advance of the conference, we got together for an informal chat covering five years of work pushing the boundaries of occupational therapy education, exploring what futures & foresight work can do for occupational therapists, and how learning from the futures which challenge our assumptions can complement the practical experience which comes from student placements.