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- Convenors:
-
Przemyslaw Plucinski
(Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan)
Michael Søgaard Jørgensen (Aalborg University)
Lina Ingeborgrud (NORDISK INSTITUTT FOR STUDIER AV INNOVASJON, FORSKNING OG UTDANNING (NIFU) STI)
Julie Hvid (Julie Hvid)
Mariusz Baranowski (Adam Mickiewicz University)
Håkon Endresen Normann (NIFU Nordisk institutt for studier av innovasjon, forskning og utdanning)
Janis Brizga (University of Latvia)
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- Chairs:
-
Przemyslaw Plucinski
(Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan)
Lina Ingeborgrud (NORDISK INSTITUTT FOR STUDIER AV INNOVASJON, FORSKNING OG UTDANNING (NIFU) STI)
- Format:
- Combined Format Open Panel
Short Abstract
The panel explores how anticipatory methods—such as Future Literacy Labs, scenario work, and design-led foresight—reshape urban transitions and resilience. It invites critical STS and design perspectives on how cities imagine, enact, and contest their futures.
Description
The 2026 Conference invites critical engagement with how societies imagine, anticipate, and enact the future. This panel examines how future-oriented methodologies both reflect and reshape urban and societal responses to uncertainty, sustainability transitions, and resilience challenges. Our point of departure is the TransScale project, which employs Future Literacy Laboratories (FLLs)—an approach enhancing participants’ capacity to “use the future” as a tool for learning and transformation. FLLs make participants aware of their hopes and assumptions, challenging what is deemed possible through unexpected “what if” scenarios.
We invite contributions from scholars applying, adapting, or critically engaging with anticipatory and speculative methods in urban and social research. We are especially interested in approaches using foresight, backcasting, scenario planning, speculative design, participatory visioning, or anticipatory ethnography to interrogate and support transitions.
We welcome theoretical, methodological, and empirical papers addressing (but not limited to):
(i) How are anticipatory methods mobilised in cities to address climate adaptation, infrastructure change, housing, energy transition, or social resilience?
(ii) How do FLLs, scenario workshops, or visioning exercises redistribute agency—who defines “the future,” and on what terms?
(iii) How are “resilience” and “sustainability transition” narrated and enacted across scales, and what frictions arise between them?
(iv) How can anticipatory methods act as democratic infrastructures, and how may speculative or design-led approaches intervene in material urban processes?
(v) What are the politics and ethics of anticipation—whose hopes and vulnerabilities are centred or erased in envisioning “urban futures”?
We seek work that: shows how anticipatory practices travel between actors and scales; treats futures as infrastructures; reflects critically on method; explores links between Futures Studies, Anticipation, STS, and Design Studies; or offers grounded accounts from cities and regions—including those beyond the usual Western European reference points. Contributions may be conceptual, comparative, practice-based, or ethnographic, including collaborations with non-academic partners and reflections on co-production, facilitation, and situated expertise.