Creative co-design practices that foster ethical and livable possibilities

The Futures + Literacies Lab brings together communities of practice across scientific and community sectors to experiment with creative methods for fostering strong citizen social science. Based at Utrecht University’s Department of Media and Culture Studies, this lab provides a platform for building and testing prototypes that center ethical and livable human futures in times of continuous digital disruptions and increasing planetary precarity. 

In the Lab, we design and test innovative pedagogical methods through classroom experiments, creative public engagement, community-engaged learning, and arts-based interventions. 

We find novel ways to weave strong critical theory into everyday reflections about tech futures. 

We work with a range of stakeholders to craft customized methods for speculative design thinking, aimed at rethinking how forecasting and backcasting can work to bring more ethical societal concerns to the foreground.

Researchers connected to the Futures + Literacies Lab specialize in ethnographic and methods that focus on how largescale issues are experienced at the local and situated level of communities and families, or when policies or concepts like the UN Sustainability Goals hit the ground or meet with human levels of practice, everyday life and learning. The Futures + Literacies Lab methods also foster stronger critical literacies among communities of practice, a vital form of community-oriented citizen social science.

Futures + Literacies Lab is part an international network of Futures related Institutes and Centers, including the Futures Hub at Monash University, the Bristol Digital Futures Institute, and the Critical Data Studies Cluster at University of Edinburgh Futures Institute. For more info, contact the Lab director, Prof dr. Annette Markham, Chair Professor of Media Literacies and Public Engagement.