Facts

Contact person:
Martin Berg
Financer:
  • Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation
Responsible at MaU:
Martin Berg
Project members at MaU:
External project members:
  • Sarah Pink – Monash University Melbourne
  • Vaike Fors – Halmstad University
  • Melisa Duque – Monash University
  • Melissa Gregg – Bristol University
  • Leah Heiss – Monash University
  • Anna Isaksson – Halmstad University
  • Debora Lanzeni – Monash University
  • Robert Lundberg – Monash University
  • Helen Manchester – Bristol University
  • Yolande Strengers – Monash University
  • Johan Vaide – Linneaus University
  • Robert Willim – Lund University
Time frame:
11 April 2025 - 31 March 2026
Faculty/department:
Research environment :
Research subject:

About the project

Assumptions about the future shape decision-making and the development of emerging technologies. While social scientists have analysed how futures are anticipated and imagined, engaged futures research— focused on shaping ethical and sustainable socio-technical futures—remains underdeveloped. Meanwhile, design, business, and speculative practice actively experiment with methodologies to influence possible futures, yet often in isolation from social science frameworks.

This gap presents an opportunity to integrate rigorous, future-oriented methodologies across disciplines. To address this, we propose a five-day workshop at the Emerging Technologies Research Lab at Monash University, Melbourne. Bringing together researchers from the Futures Hub, the Digital Work Futures Research Lab, the Research Centre for Imagining and Co-Creating Futures, the Centre for Sociodigital Futures, and the REBEL: Re-Imagining Future Smart Living programme, alongside leading and emerging scholars, this event will explore methodological innovations and develop a global research agenda.

By integrating critical social inquiry with speculative design, this initiative will foster interdisciplinary collaboration, drive new research, and shape how socio-technical futures are studied and made. Immediate outcomes include research collaborations and funding applications, while a special issue in Futures will establish a lasting impact on theorising and investigating future technologies.