In a world that seems caught in a crisis-ridden present, there is a need to reawaken our capacity to collectively imagine, make, organise, and educate towards more hopeful futures. The centre offers a transdisciplinary space for collaborative research and education for just, sustainable and inclusive futures that invites diverse knowledges and perspectives.

The world faces a deficit of social imagination. We find it easy to imagine apocalypse and disaster; or to imagine new generations of technology. But we find it much harder than in the past to imagine a better society a generation or more into the future.

Geoff Mulgan, The Imaginary Crisis (2020)

Malmö Research Centre for Imagining and Co-Creating Futures brings together researchers and teachers from across the university to bring the transformative and critical potential of design, art, culture, humanities and the social sciences to bear on key areas of critical societal transformation. The scope of these areas spans critical issues such as collective responses to climate change, environmental degradation and sustainability to the rise of political polarization and extremism or the profound impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) and the rapid development of digital technology on relationships, social interactions and public discourse, and ultimately, the sustainability of society and democracy.

Our shared agenda in these areas is organised around four interconnected orientations to future-making, each providing a set of questions, concerns and methods: Imagining Futures, Making Futures, Organizing Futures, and Educating for Futures.

News and events

Event, 9 April

FUTURES Thoughts: What Grows in a Silicon Forest?

Lecture, 23 April

FUTURES Thoughts: Pluralizing and Politicizing Service Design

Seminar, 23 April

FUTURES Thoughts: Engaged scholarship for possible futures

FUTURES Thoughts

A warm welcome to our public talk series, FUTURES Thoughts.

FUTURES Thoughts – Spring 2026

The public talk series is held at K3 Studio in Niagara on Thursdays 13.15–15.00 unless otherwise stated.

9 April: What Grows in a Silicon Forest?

Melissa Gregg, Professor of Digital Futures, University of Bristol, UK.

23 April, 10.15–12.00: Pluralizing and Politicizing Service Design: Critical Agendas and a Worker-Centered Approach

Lara Penin, Professor in Transdisciplinary Design, The New School, US.

23 April: Engaged scholarship for possible futures: let’s burst the foresight bubble together

Sarah Pink, Laureate Professor and Director of the Emerging Technologies Lab and FUTURES Hub at Monash University, Australia.

Hörsal B2 (NI:B0E07). Please note room may change depending on sign-ups.

7 May: Decolonisation by (and with) old white men in Flow Feelers. Is that even possible, relevant, or feasible?

Martin Hultman, Professor in Sociology, Gothenburg University.

28 May: Imaginative Futures: Imagination, Art, and Media in a Strange World

Bo Reimer, Professor Emeritus in Media and Communication Studies, Malmö University.

16 June, 18.00–19.00: A conversation on art, radical imagination and hope

Geoffrey Mulgan, Professor of Collective Intelligence, Public Policy and Social Innovation at University College London, UK.

Organised in collaboration with Malmö Möts 12–18 June.

Research projects

Total hits: 11

Researchers

Total hits: 72

Publications

Collaboration

Collaboration is an integral dimension of our work, and is built into all processes and activities of the centre. We draw on existing collaboration infrastructures at Malmö University, for example the Forum for Social Innovation Sweden, UNIC Centre for City Futures, alongside a number of partnerships with external stakeholders, in order to increase our societal reach and impact.

Contact

Email us

futures@mau.se