How do we imagine the futures? Long-term perspectives on cultural change and post-anthropocene world views

Prof. Dr. Thomas Meier (Heidelberg (University) & Dr. Valerie Palmowski (Bonn University)

Date: 25 + 26 July 2025, 10 am – 5.30 pm.

Place: Seminar Room of the Graduate Academy, Im Neuenheimer Feld 370, Heidelberg.

Today, our view of the world is that of a life undergoing profound transformations. Climate change, migration, digitalization, and shifting political landscapes challenge established ways of living. But these challenges also open up spaces for new ideas, new values, and new visions of the future.

This workshop invites you to think beyond the present moment and imagine long-term cultural change. What futures can we envision in response to today’s complexities? How can academic thinking help shape meaningful alternatives? Together, we will explore how past, present, and future are interwoven – and how looking ahead can offer fresh perspectives on the now.

To this end the workshop aims to untangle the opaque package called “the future”. We will explore the narrative connections and psychological interactions between the pasts, presents, and futures and back from the futures to the presents and the pasts. We will examine different kinds of futures: determined and open futures, certain and unknown futures, near, middle and far futures. Furthermore, we will experiment with methods of future-thinking and develop our own narratives, drawing from both critical reflection and creative imagination.

The workshop does not aim to predict the future, neither will it focus on narratives about the dooming end of the world – typically dark, dystopian, apocalyptic. It is about reclaiming our capacity to imagine the times to come – deliberately, collectively, and also opening space for hope.

Join us in rethinking the possible. Feel invited to contribute to a better world …