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Collaborative Future-Making
Future-Making
The Collaborative Future-Making research platform explores how we can envision inclusive and sustainable ways of living and thriving together. We do this through prototypes and discussions where people from all sectors of society are involved. Our multidisciplinary group of researchers have respective backgrounds in humanities, design, and social sciences.
Future-making Academy – to read futures for societal change
FMA Spring 2023 is fully booked. If you want to be contacted and possibly join the next FMA you can send an email to Charlotte Orban.
14 February - 13 April
Do you work with social transformation and change? Perhaps you are a civil servant within a municipality or region, a teacher, an activist, work at an NGO, or an artist. Do you want to deepen your knowledge and reflect together with others?
The Future-making Academy at Malmö University is a new initiative where we invite you to a reading circle focusing on complexity, future-making, and collaboration. The purpose is to make research available, deepen and provide space to examine and discuss how thoughts and ideas from the texts we read can resonate with our own practices.
The reading circle will be conducted in both Swedish and English. No specific skills are required or needed to participate besides an interest in reading and reflecting. However, it is important to be able to participate in all meetings because the group is carefully put together to be a good interdisciplinary reflection environment.
Seminars 2022
5 April
Future imaginaries of artificial intelligence for human life – a Nordic perspective.
With: Jason Tucker and Michael Strange, GPS Malmö University
6 April
Agonistic Navigating: Exploring and (Re)configuring Youth Participation in Design.
With: Kate Ferguson, participatory designer and PhD candidate, RMIT University, Melbourne. Co-hosted with the K3 Seminar Series.
Kate Ferguson
Kate Ferguson has recently completed a PhD at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. With a professional background in architecture, placemaking, public engagement, and community projects, she has a longstanding interest in the way people participate in shaping the built environment.
28 April
Flow Feelers – a study circle on applied ecofeminism for men.
With: Thomas Laurien, senior lecturer in design at HDK-Valand, and co-founder of the Design and Posthumanism Network
9 May
The Issue of Agency in Public Sector Infrastructuring Final PhD seminar.
With: PhD student in Interaction Design Alicia Smedberg K3 MAU and discussant Carl DiSalvo, School of Literature, Media, & Communication, Georgia Institute of Technology. This will be co-hosted with the K3 seminar series.19 May, 14.00-16.00
Stories and Design Recipes to Wonder, Care and Prioritize Relational Homemaking
50% PhD seminar with PhD student in Interaction Design Juliana Restrepo Giraldo K3 MAU/Linneus University and discussant Martín Ávila Professor of Design at Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design. This will be co-hosted with the K3 seminar series.
23-25 May
1st Symposium on Storytelling and Collaborative Future Making
Seminars 2021
4 March
Transmissions: Critical tactics for making and communicating research (video)
17 March
25 March
How can we imagine a future for integration? (video)
31 March
A part of K3's seminar series and part four of the Co-becoming in the Pluriverse series.
We know so much, but we have not learned to use knowledge wisely (video)
6 April – 28 May
River – A process for decolonizing together
12 April
Automation of imagination (video)
15 April
From Dark Mountain to Östervåla: Gatherings around Climate Predicaments (video)
28 April
29 April
Storytelling for sustainability(video)
4 May
Speculative fiction and the bureaucracy of the future(video)
5 May
11 May
Decertifying legal sex/gender status (video)
28 September
Watch 'Utopia's in the making' at Mau Play
4 October
Watch Respectively Yours: Yoko and Ann on Pluralist Accounting at Mau Play
12 November
Watch Public sector innovation: panacea or pandora´s box? at Mau Play
13 December
Symposium
2nd Symposium on Storytelling and Collaborative Future-Making

The Leadership and Organization Group and the platform of Collaborative Future-Making hereby invite you to the 2nd symposium at Malmö University on the theme of storytelling and collaborative future-making. The symposium will take place 2-4 May 2023.
Invitation to the 2nd symposium on Storytelling and Collaborative Future Making
The Leadership and Organization Group and the platform of Collaborative Future-Making hereby invite you to the 2nd symposium at Malmö University on the theme of storytelling and collaborative future-making. The symposium will take place 2-4 May 2023.
We invite a varied group of scholars from disciplines like design studies, leadership and organization studies, work science, communication, art, architecture, education and urban planning. The symposium is organized by Associate Professor Hope Witmer, Professor Per-Anders Hillgren and Professor Kenneth Mølbjerg Jørgensen. The theme Storytelling and Collaborative Future Making addresses collaborative responses to making a sustainable and common future within the diverse areas mentioned above.
The symposium explores new ideas and approaches that mix storytelling and collaboration with questions concerning human rights and our relations to nature.
A common thread in the symposium is to explore the role that storytelling can have in crafting ethical foundations for work, organization, design, architecture, education and urban development. Storytelling and collaboration for earthly survival mix with questions concerning how to collaborate and organize for human rights. While the 17 SDGs have been successful in mobilizing attention to questions concerning sustainability and inclusion, the embedded idea of balancing profit, people, and the planet in actual strategies and practices seems to be off-track in practising sustainable and inclusive development. Sustainability and inclusion are more and more at risk of becoming empty signifiers. Therefore, this symposium presents new ideas, concepts and approaches that allow for new understandings of how to work with all aspects of sustainability, and which aim for organizational and societal impact.
The symposium explores new ideas and approaches that mix storytelling and collaboration with questions concerning human rights and our relations to nature. These approaches might range from new embodied, relational, and material understandings of storytelling, the problematic and complex relations between small stories and grand narratives, the relations between places, spaces, and stories, post-human, transhuman and storytelling and -making for Gaia, feminist or queer storytelling. We also invite contributions on how to research and write differently in ways where we take upon us our earthly responsibility. Such contributions may be inspired by engaged scholarship, reflexive inquiry, post-qualitative inquiry, or speculative fabulation. Finally, we also invite new approaches to understand the details of how we work and collaborate and how they mix with issues concerning human rights and nature. These might comprise ideas from performative approaches to accounting, logistics, learning, collaboration, and planning.
Join us
If you want to join us, please submit an abstract of app. 500 words by 5 April 2023. This year we will also collect contributions for an edited book on storytelling and collaborative future-making. It is possible to only attend parts of the events. If this is the case, we would like you to provide information about when you are attending. The event is free of charge. We will not be offering accommodations for lunch or dinner. We will make space for social gatherings in Malmö and organize a joint meeting place for dinner in Malmö for those who are interested.
Contact
Please send any queries to the organizing committee, Kenneth, Hope or Per-Anders
Seminars
Transition Landscapes
Challenging heritage development by engaging with the past in the design space. With: Mela Zuljevic Faculty of Architecture and Arts, University of Hasselt, Belgium
https://play.mau.se/id/0_knlzjp6f?width=608&height=402&playerId=23452644
'Utopia’s in the making: the power(s) of participatory post-fossil futuring'
https://play.mau.se/id/0_z6f3rl8v?width=608&height=402&playerId=23452644
Seminar: Pushing social sustainable agendas
Platform affiliated researcher Rahel Weldeab Sebhatu took part in a seminar at the Museums as Catalysts for Change event: What role can museums play in the fight for a sustainable future?
https://youtube.com/embed/FtTqCk_aGLg?enablejsapi=1&rel=0&showinfo=1&controls=1
Our research
Our work draws upon multidisciplinary, critical perspectives from the humanities and social sciences. We combine these perspectives with design research methods that are collaborative and constructive, such as making and prototyping.
One of our guiding concepts is critical imagination, which is about challenging basic assumptions, norms and structures for what constitutes socially, culturally, ecologically and economically sustainable futures.
Our research is carried out in collaboration with professionals and policy makers, as well as individuals and non-governmental organisations. Together, we prototype and discuss alternative and collaborative futures.
To summarise, the platform aims to:
- envision and prototype inclusive and sustainable futures
- develop ways for how these futures can be debated
- work closely with actors from all sectors of society
Research methodologies and focus areas
Research methodologies and approaches include art, action research, co-design, discourse theory and analysis, feminism, hermeneutics, historicisation, performativity, phenomenology, postcolonial studies, posthumanism, science and technology studies, and social network analysis.
Focus areas include critical imagination, anthropocene storytelling, heterodox economies, collaborative resilience, and societal engagement.
Forskningsplattformen Collaborative Future-Making tar sin utgångspunkt i mänsklighetens bristande förmåga att föreställa sig hur världen skulle kunna vara annorlunda.
Ett centralt begrepp är "critical imagination" (kritisk föreställningsförmåga). Detta handlar om att ifrågasätta grundläggande antaganden, normer och strukturer. Syftet med detta är att vidga människors perspektiv på vad som skulle kunna utgöra socialt, kulturellt, ekologiskt och ekonomiskt hållbara framtider.
Plattformen utforskar hur vi kan föreställa oss dessa alternativa framtider samt formerna för hur vi gemensamt kan utforma, testa och debattera dem. Den tvärvetenskapliga forskargruppen är verksam inom humaniora, design och samhällsvetenskap.
Researchers, publications and projects
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Staff
Sara Bjärstorp - Senior lecturer
sara.bjarstorp@mau.se -
Staff
Carin Cuadra - Professor
carin.cuadra@mau.se -
AEStaff
Anders Emilsson - Senior lecturer
anders.emilson@mau.se -
Staff
Sara Gottschalk - Lecturer
sara.gottschalk@mau.se -
Staff
Anne-Marie Hansen - Senior lecturer
anne-marie.hansen@mau.se -
Staff
Jess Haynie-Lavelle - Doctoral student
jess.haynie-lavelle@mau.se -
Staff
Maria Hellström Reimer - Professor
maria.hellstrom.reimer@mau.se -
PHStaff
Per-Anders Hillgren - Professor
per-anders.hillgren@mau.se -
Staff
Li Jönsson - Senior lecturer
li.jonsson@mau.se -
Staff
Asko Kauppinen - Senior lecturer
asko.kauppinen@mau.se -
Staff
Rebecka Lettevall - Pro-vice-chancellor/Professor
rebecka.lettevall@mau.se -
ALStaff
Ann Light - Guest professor
ann.light@mau.se -
Staff
Jacob Lind - Postdoc
jacob.lind@mau.se -
PLStaff
Per Linde - Head of unit/Senior lecturer
per.linde@mau.se -
Staff
Kristina Lindström - Senior lecturer
kristina.lindstrom@mau.se -
Staff
Stephen Marr - Senior lecturer
stephen.marr@mau.se -
Staff
Margareta Melin - Senior lecturer
margareta.melin@mau.se -
Staff
Anders Melin - Associate Professor/Senior lecturer
anders.melin@mau.se -
Staff
Dennis Munetsi - Doctoral student
dennis.munetsi@mau.se -
Staff
Kenneth Mølbjerg Jørgensen - Professor
kenneth.molbjerg-jorgensen@mau.se -
Staff
Magnus Nilsson - Professor
magnus.nilsson@mau.se -
Staff
Annika Olsson - Dean/Associate Professor
annika.olsson@mau.se -
PRStaff
Petra Ragnerstam - Senior lecturer
petra.ragnerstam@mau.se -
Staff
Bo Reimer - Professor
bo.reimer@mau.se -
Staff
Juliana Restrepo Giraldo - Doctoral student
juliana.restrepo-giraldo@mau.se -
SSStaff
Staffan Schmidt - Senior lecturer
staffan.schmidt@mau.se -
Staff
Alicia Smedberg - Senior lecturer
alicia.smedberg@mau.se -
Staff
Michael Strange - Associate Professor/Senior lecturer
michael.strange@mau.se -
Staff
Jason Tucker - Associate senior lecturer
jason.tucker@mau.se -
Staff
Rahel Weldeab Sebhatu - Doctoral student
rahel-weldeab.sebhatu@mau.se -
Staff
Josepha Wessels - Associate Professor/Senior lecturer
josepha.wessels@mau.se -
Staff
Hope Witmer - Associate Professor/Senior lecturer
hope.witmer@mau.se
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2023 | Article in journal
Live-action role-playing and the affordances of social media
Sara Bjärstorp, Petra Ragnerstam
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2023 | Chapter in book
Live Action Role Playing and Engagement with Literature
Sara Bjärstorp, Petra Ragnerstam
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2023 | Conference paper
A teacher education course on climate change and critical mathematics education
Magnus Ödmo, Anna Chronaki, Lisa Björklund Boistrup
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2023 | Chapter in book
More-Than-Human Perspectives and Values in Human-Computer Interaction
Daisy Yoo, Tilde Bekker, Peter Dalsgaard, Eva Eriksson, Simon Fougt Skov, Christopher Frauenberger, Batya Friedman, Anne-Marie Hansen, Elisa Giaccardi, Ann Light, Elisabet M. Nilsson, Ron Wakkary, Mikael Wiberg
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2023 | Article in journal
Precarity and Class Consciousness in Contemporary Swedish Working-Class Literature
Magnus Nilsson
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2023 | Book
Sorg och Hopp i Omställning: En Orienteringsguide
Kristina Lindström, Li Jönsson, Christina Lindkvist, Jonas Larsen, Per-Anders Hillgren
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2023 | Article in journal
Precarity and Class Consciousness in Contemporary Swedish Working-Class Literature
Magnus Nilsson
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2022 | Article in journal
Pluriversal Spaces for Decolonizing Design: Exploring Decolonial Directions for Participatory Design
Nicholas Baroncelli Torretta, Lizette Reitsma, Per-Anders Hillgren, Tara Nair van Ryneveld, Anne-Marie Hansen, Yénika Castillo Muñoz
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2022 | Conference paper
Designing transformative futures
Ann Light, Collin M Gray, Kristina Lindström, Laura Forlano, Dan Lockton, Chris Speed
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2022 | Conference paper
Narrating ecological grief and hope through reproduction and translations
Li Jönsson, Kristina Lindström
Glossary
Glossary: Collaborative Future-Making

This glossary was first used within the research group as an exercise to share concepts that we found central to collaborative future-making, then to be used during the Imagining Collaborative Future-Making workshop. This collection of concepts reflects the heterogeneous and diverse character of the research group and a strong belief in that plurality regarding ontologies and epistemologies will be crucial to being able to handle the multiple uncertainties and complex challenges we have to face in the future.
- Andrea Botero, Aalto University, Finland
- Davina Cooper, King's College London, UK
- Max Koch, Lund University, Sweden
- Andrew Morrison, The Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Norway
- Emily Spiers, Lancaster University, UK
- Danielle Wilde, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark
Contact
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PH
Per-Anders Hillgren - Professor
per-anders.hillgren@mau.se
040-665 70 99
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Michael Strange - Associate Professor/Senior lecturer
michael.strange@mau.se
040-665 72 16
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Kristina Lindström - Senior lecturer
kristina.lindstrom@mau.se
040-665 73 98
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Hope Witmer - Associate Professor/Senior lecturer
hope.witmer@mau.se
040-665 71 42