Consolidating an open, convivial and interdisciplinary forum for scholars, practitioners, researchers, and citizens engaging with the fields of anticipation and future studies, the 5th International Conference on Anticipation seeks to deepen and widen the exchange of new ideas, and possible future directions seeking reflection and action in the interest of a better collective global future.
Anticipating the challenges, opportunities, and conditions of future change is an exercise that is both global and local, entangled with values that are at once universal and particular. One way of qualifying the unfinished processes and new horizons co-existing in the worlds around us is through specifying the various intersecting contexts in which these processes and horizons operate. Foregrounding the significance of context, the conference invites us to locate ourselves in the first quarter of the 21st century facing conditions which are significantly different from those that previous generations have faced. Moreover, the understandings, framings, skills, imaginaries, and means of instigating positive change of future generations will differ from those to which we currently have access. It matters that anticipations emerge from and are shaped in particular places at particular times, however globally interdependent connections might be across individuals, groups, institutions, systems and cultures.
Building on the success of previous conferences (Trento, London, Oslo, Tempe) and the leadership of previous conference chairs (Poli 2015, Facer 2017, Morrison 2019, Selin 2022), we encourage submissions that use Anticipation as a means of engaging with the climate emergency, transitional justice, AI and ethics, energy security, social inequalities, public health and wellbeing, socio-technical systems, cultural values, activism, the right to protest, and more. Submissions are encouraged to do so in ways that highlight context as central and formative for anticipatory action and thought.
The 4th International Conference on Anticipation provides an interdisciplinary meeting ground in which researchers, scholars and practitioners who are engaging with anticipation and anticipatory practices can come together to deepen their understanding and create productive new connections.
The overarching aim of the conference and of the interdisciplinary field of Anticipation Studies is to create new understandings of how individuals, groups, institutions, systems and cultures use ideas of the future to act in the present. This conference will build on prior conferences in Trento, Italy (2015, led by Roberto Poli), London, England (2017, led by Keri Facer) and Oslo, Norway (2019, led by Andrew Morrison).
This fourth conference will emphasize questions of justice. Living with intractable and ineradicable uncertainty leads humans to read the tea leaves, consult the oracle, and tell imaginative stories. Increasingly, we tend to reach for forecasting, statistical analysis and data-driven scenarios, oftentimes narrowing the production of particular types of futures. The Anticipation Conference in 2022 is devoted to opening up the study of anticipation to new voices, new spaces and new approaches.
We encourage submissions that pursue diverse topics– climate change, transitions to justice, AI, energy, poverty reduction, economic systems, health and wellbeing, innovation, food security— across a range of sectors, and embracing different disciplinary perspectives and methodological approaches. We especially invite contributions that center questions of equity, fairness, diversity and inclusivity and question who imagines futures and with which impacts.
We invite proposals that speak to the following themes and questions, intended to encourage conversations between researchers, practitioners and scholars addressing anticipatory phenomena and practices in different ways. The formats provided offer openings for emerging and challenging ideas and ways to communicate them creatively and critically. We invite papers, curated sessions, techniques workshops and new ideas sessions with more information below on formats.
Inspired by the success of different session formats used in previous editions of the conference, we will combine a range of ‘tried-and-tested’ sessions with new models seeking to enhance the sharing of findings as much as the dilemmas raised by intractable questions.
Curated Sessions. Intended to share new knowledge and generate interdisciplinary discussion, these 90-minute sessions should address one (or more) of the questions and themes outlined above and actively involve different disciplines. Session curators should gather 3-4 others to co-create a cohesive session, designed to be interactive, including, for example, a participatory experience that invites embodied exploration of different concepts or practices of anticipation; a symposium of four papers and a discussant; a set of multiple inputs of different forms, designed to elicit conversation and reflection; a guided walk with place-based interventions. The remit is to facilitate deep conversation and reflection amongst the conference participants. The choice of format lies with the Session Curators, who will act as the main contact for the conference organisers.
7/7 sessions. This means seven slides and seven minutes for each presentation. The sessions will have plenty of time for discussion. This will be supported by having both a chair and a discussant. Presenters shall focus on their main argument and key message, and avoid overly complex presentations.
Debate sessions. Debate sessions have a maximum of five presenters. Each gives a five minutes focused input to the topic and this should be followed by discussion involving the audience. Led by a chair.
Experimental sessions. These sessions invite experimental ways of presenting, discussing and interacting through, for example, creative workshops. Sessions can be experimental in relation to the papers/projects presented but they can also be experimental in relation to new formats for sessions (including ‘unconferencing’ formats like lightning talks, dotmocracy or café philosophique, participatory art, and so forth).
Panel sessions. Submit a thematic panel session consisting of 3-4 papers which will explore common questions discussed against the background of different case studies and approaches brought together collectively in a chaired session.
All other format submissions should include a title, summary of the session theme and the method chosen for facilitating discussion (100 words), as well as abstracts for each contribution/presentation (300 words). A short biography of each presenter is also required (100 words), with contact information.
We particularly encourage PhD students and early career researchers to share their ideas in a supportive critical environment. The local organising committee is exploring the possibility of planning a summer school in the lead up to the conference. Do get in touch if you’d like to get involved!
Please send all submissions to the conference email address: anticipation2024@lancaster.ac.uk
Inspired by the success of different session formats used in previous editions of the conference, we will combine a range of ‘tried-and-tested’ sessions with new models seeking to enhance the sharing of findings as much as the dilemmas raised by intractable questions.
Intended to share new knowledge and generate interdisciplinary discussion, these 90-minute sessions should address one (or more) of the questions and themes outlined above and actively involve different disciplines. Session curators should gather 3-4 others to co-create a cohesive session, designed to be interactive, including, for example, a participatory experience that invites embodied exploration of different concepts or practices of anticipation; a symposium of four papers and a discussant; a set of multiple inputs of different forms, designed to elicit conversation and reflection; a guided walk with place-based interventions. The remit is to facilitate deep conversation and reflection amongst the conference participants. The choice of format lies with the Session Curators, who will act as the main contact for the conference organisers.
This means seven slides and seven minutes for each presentation. The sessions will have plenty of time for discussion. This will be supported by having both a chair and a discussant. Presenters shall focus on their main argument and key message, and avoid overly complex presentations.
Debate sessions have a maximum of five presenters. Each gives a five minutes focused input to the topic and this should be followed by discussion involving the audience. Led by a chair.
These sessions invite experimental ways of presenting, discussing and interacting through, for example, creative workshops. Sessions can be experimental in relation to the papers/projects presented but they can also be experimental in relation to new formats for sessions (including ‘unconferencing’ formats like lightning talks, dotmocracy or café philosophique, participatory art, and so forth).
Submit a thematic panel session consisting of 3-4 papers which will explore common questions discussed against the background of different case studies and approaches brought together collectively in a chaired session.
Discuss early or exploratory work and present it as a poster at the conference. Submission consists of an abstract (300 words) and a brief biography (100 words) including contact information. The full poster is due on 15 August 2024.
Individual submission of a paper consists of an abstract (300 words) and a brief biography (100 words) including contact information. Papers will be grouped thematically by the programme committee and, unless requested otherwise, may become part of 7/7 or panel sessions.
All other format submissions should include a title, summary of the session theme and the method chosen for facilitating discussion (100 words), as well as abstracts for each contribution/presentation (300 words). A short biography of each presenter is also required (100 words), with contact information.
We particularly encourage PhD students and early career researchers to share their ideas in a supportive critical environment. The local organising committee is exploring the possibility of planning a summer school in the lead up to the conference. Do get in touch if you’d like to get involved!
Please send all submissions to the conference email address: anticipation2024@lancaster.ac.uk
We invite individual and collaborative proposals on a range of formats which engage with these broad questions and develop further the themes below.
Futures are contextual. They have a geography and a history constraining the conditions of what is possible and probable. Questions of context also inform the process of striking a better balance between present and future possibilities and the values and desires guiding anticipatory actions for the benefit of the many in the future.
How can futuring and anticipation be a shared public good?
How are spaces for public anticipation being designed and implemented? Who is centered and excluded from these?
How can communities be empowered to create and act on their own futures?
What impedes and enables engagement with plural futures?
What are the best mechanisms for nurturing a broad societal capacity for anticipation?
In what ways can Anticipation help us counter the apocalyptic visions of crises, tragedies, displacements caused by the climate emergency? What relationships between environments, societies, individuals and politico-economic systems can Anticipation methods and approaches foster so that we are better placed to respond more effectively to (un)foreseeable change?
How is power wielded, shared, transferred or negotiated in anticipatory practices?
How do anticipatory regimes produce and/or reimagine governance?
How do the political dimensions of anticipation promote or impede progress towards more just futures?
Which worldviews, principles or practices are involved in ethical– and unethical– anticipations?
How do we understand the many, longstanding, and varied legacies of colonialism and its post-colonial successor systems and what those legacies mean for and do to our capacity to anticipate open plural futures? How could an Anticipation lens enable us to engage differently and critically with morally charged questions around reparation, generational trauma, the historical maps of takers and losers whose legacy is still with us today?
What do the flows of knowledge on anticipation between the global north and the global south look like?
How is anticipation connected to emancipation, revolution, activism and social movements?
What methodological and ontological perspectives are opened up through indigenous futuring?
How do different cultures, religions and traditions anticipate?
What can ethnography, sociology, comparative studies, regional studies, and other disciplines show us about cultural variations of anticipation?
What are the archives upon which our anticipations are based? In what ways could we use these archives to become better ancestors? What can we learn from generations past, aboriginal and indigenous seven-generation thinking back into the past and forwards into the future? Are our anticipatory practices and institutions doing justice to a more sustaining relationship between humans and the environments on which they depend? What role should a grounded understanding of the past play in activating different kinds of futures?
How do community and organizational infrastructures promote futures thinking and anticipatory capacity building?
What is the role of emotion– delight, serendipity, surprise, anxiety, dread and wonder– in anticipatory thinking and practice?
Which forms of literacies buttress anticipatory capacities?
What is the role of educational institutions in fostering capacities for anticipation and for critique of anticipatory work?
Which new narratives do we need to open up the anticipatory spirit and action required to reverse the inertia of business as usual, the prevalence of there-is-no-alternative (TINA) thinking, and the parsimony of institutions reluctant to change? How do we bridge the many worlds that stories can conjure with the everyday life of real constraints on the worlds in which we live, work and play?
What creative, artistic, design-based and avant-garde approaches are in play?
How can new media, VR/AR, immersive experience design and games be deployed to activate better futures?
What is the interaction between the analogue and digital, the live and virtual in anticipatory practice and foresight?
What media and IT systems are being used to create future narratives, and what types of affordances, limitations and trade-offs do they enfold?
What would a temporal literacy encompassing the timelines of humans, Earth system, material and natural worlds, look like? What are the main barriers to integrating the duration of a human lifespan (say, 75 years) with geological processes spanning millions of years, and the rapidity of micro-second transactions relating to fast global trading?
How can temporality studies problematize and pluralize anticipatory practices?
How is temporality understood at different scales and by different disciplines?
How does temporality impact governance and justice?
What are the histories of the future? Which concepts and practices help us to use the past to inform alternative futures?
What is the role of intergenerational dialogue in anticipation?
To what extent are ideas of the future implicit in the way in which our everyday lives unfold, the way institutions adopt values, ideological strategies and political directions, and shift them to suit different interests over time? Anticipating is a temporally inflected human activity which is anchored in particular understandings of the future, including the means and capacities we each have to direct it, foretell it, or let it unfold.
Despite (or perhaps because of!) a chaotic organization of disciplines, intellectual histories, professional practices, anticipation studies has an ethos of freeing up the possibility space. We encourage new-comers and those who do not neatly fit in categories. Therefore, we are also open to surprise and want to hear from you. If you do not see your scholarship or practice in these themes, send us your ideas.
