ITD-CH 22 "Developing and reflecting on images of the future - How can TD research help to expand social imaginative spaces?"
Programme
09h45 - 11h15 Plenum
Welcome: Christoph Küffer (OST, td-net) and Theres Paulsen (td-net)
Presentations by:
Dr. Jean-Luc Barras, Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and Mirko Winkel, artist and coordinator of mLAB, Institute of Geography, University of Bern talk about the role of transdisciplinarity for Futures Literacy - a core competence of the 21st century (UNESCO). One perspective each from research funding and science.
11h30h - 12h15 | 13h15 - 14h Experience methods (interactive parallel workshops)
Participants could take part in one workshop of their choice in the morning and one in the afternoon.
14h15 - 15h15 Networking (discussion rounds) based on digital posters.
Participants will be invited to present their current ITD research as well as reflections on how they deal with goal knowledge, future images and other normative aspects of envisioning the future in a digital poster (no selection process). A template will be provided. All participants will receive access to the virtual poster gallery before the conference. The posters will be available digitally to working groups at the conference as a basis for discussion of the following guiding questions:
What role do future images play in the TD research environment?
Which TD methods are already being used in dealing with future images?
How do we want to expand our competences on future images?
15h30 - 16h30 Plenary session
Moderated final discussion of the different approaches and the potential of mutual learning based on key questions and involving a new generation of young researchers.
Afterwards: Apéro and social get together
Context to the conference
Developing and reflecting on images of the future
How can TD research help expand social imaginative spaces?
Images, ideas, visions, forecasts and stories about the future are part of our everyday life and shape our actions. What contribution can interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches to science make so that we deal with the "desirable" in a reflective, cooperative and creative way? Which - interactive, narrative, creative, virtual - approaches are suitable to capture and expand social spaces of imagination and transformation in a participatory way? What contribution does transdisciplinarity make to competent "future literacy", which UNESCO describes as a core competence of the 21st century?
Methods of transdisciplinary research in the focus of the conference
Transdisciplinary research offers approaches and methods to develop images of the future, to reflect on them and to develop creative approaches to their implementation. We will experience, discuss and document different methods at the conference. The exchange of practical experiences and mutual learning will be in the foreground. Based on guiding questions, we will shed light on how to deal with implicit and explicit images of the future in transdisciplinary processes. We will also ask ourselves to what extent research funding and researchers should rethink and promote the future orientation of the sciences.
Images of the future are shaped by approaches from different disciplines
Images of the future are shaped by the different approaches of various disciplines from the natural sciences, social sciences, humanities, planning sciences and economics as well as by social actors. The inter- and transdisciplinary linking of these disciplines makes it possible to focus on the dynamic and multidimensional contexts and interests of different social developments. Thematic fields here are, for example, digitalisation, nutrition, social change or ecological crises. At the conference, we will compare how we deal with images of the future in different thematic fields. One focus will be on the example of landscape. In the landscape, value concepts, structures and developments overlap and become tangible. Following the ITD-CH 22, the Swiss Landscape Congress will take place in Rapperswil (8/9.09.2022), where these questions can be further discussed. A special price for the Landscape Congress will be offered to ITD-CH participants.
Participation and networking
Based on guiding questions, we will shed light on how to deal with implicit and explicit images of the future in transdisciplinary processes. Everyone is invited to prepare a poster on their own work.
The posters are to be understood as extended business cards that offer points of contact for exchange. On the one hand, the template contains some space to name research foci and applied (td) methods. On the other hand, it invites reflections on how to deal with images of the future, knowledge of goals and other normative aspects of ideas about the future.
The posters will be presented at the conference in a virtual poster gallery and serve as a basis for the discussion rounds in the afternoon programme on the guiding questions:
What role do future images play in the TD research environment?
Which TD methods are already being used in dealing with future images?
How do we want to expand our competences on future images?
Compared to classical poster presentations, the aim is thus less to present well thought-out concepts or secured results, but to share reflections and empirical values in order to become more future-ready and to network in the Swiss ITD community.