GESDA Anticipation Workshop - Futures Research

Evening

Sophie Gilbert

To plan for societal, environmental and technological futures, international organisations, national government and businesses often depend on quantitative prediction, forecast, and workshops. However, these numerical and rapid information-gathering approaches cannot fully account for how the qualitative realities of future lives, the values and actions of people, and the agency of other species and planetary environments will influence, shape and complicate possible futures. Credible, precise and responsible decision-making and planning for the future of humanity requires qualitative futures knowledge that is rooted in the rigour of the social sciences and humanities. At the same time, there is an urgent need to ensure that the qualitative knowledge gained through the scholarship and practice of the social sciences is recognisable, accessible and influential in the decision-making sphere.

Sarah Pink

When seeking to deliver anticipations about possible futures, there is a hindrance: the gap in our body of knowledge and knowing that represents our ignorance regarding questions such as how life will play out, be experienced, innovated or made more complicated in the coming decades. It is therefore important for us to consider what kinds of knowledge and knowing we in Foresight and Futures Literacy can deliver about possible futures, and whether this differs from the knowledge proposed and delivered by other disciplines, such as the quantitative knowledge offered by forecasting, enabling new understandings of futures not previously accessible. Also vital is the consideration of what form the knowledge and knowing offered by Foresight and Futures Literacy might take. Will it be arts-mediated, such as writing or performance, for example? Whatever form it does take, it should be accessible to and collaborative with other disciplines, sectors and stakeholders in futures, enabling, where appropriate, influence towards ethical and inclusive futures. Are these easy issues to resolve? What progress is likely in 5, 10 and 25 years?

Yolande Stengers

Jorge Juárez Li

There are numerous theories of futures but it is imperative that research in this area is accessible to researchers from other disciplines and to professionals from other sectors, such as diplomats and policy makers. This means that futures researchers must develop theories supported by well-defined concepts that are useful for interdisciplinary, multisectoral and other stakeholder engagement. To work towards this requires careful consideration of which concepts should inform how we understand, analyse and work towards futures; how we define these concepts; how we might mobilise them once they are well-defined, and how such concepts can advance new approaches to forecast, foresight and futures literacies. Importantly, we must also understand the timescales involved here: what is possible in 5 years, 10 years and 25 years?

Sian Bayne

Simone Abram

There is scope for the qualitative social sciences and humanities to create new layers of knowledge and knowing about possible futures using immersive research with participants in research. Existing approaches to forecast depend on statistics. Foresight and futures literacies mainly depend on workshop methods. But qualitative, participatory, ethnographic, creative practice and other methods characterise futures research in the social sciences and humanities, so how can these methods be innovated and employed to offer new kinds of knowledge that we cannot gain through conventional futures methods? Are there interdisciplinary and ethical concerns relating to this futures knowledge? If we resolve these questions, how quickly can new methods be introduced: what might the field have changed in 5, 10 and 25 years?

Helen Manchester

Annette Markham

GESDA Anticipation Workshop - Futures Research