Professor Dr Carlos Lopez-Galviz

Co-director

My work looks at futures thinking and future forming through the lens of cities, ruins and infrastructure. I have studied cities like London, Paris and Shanghai, using history as a means of thinking about what theories and which methods are relevant to understanding their future today and in the past. I am interested in research that is comparative and collaborations that combine disciplinary rigour with cross-disciplinary openness.

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Dr Natasa Lakovic

Co-Director

Natasa Lackovic is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Educational Research. Her work concerns futures and change across different educational and place-based dimensions – community, university, schools, relating to: place/environment (e.g. place-based education), wellbeing, creativity, criticality, and digitalisation. Natasa has developed creative narrative and educational methods, such as visual storytelling, for example, student and artist co-created graphic novel on students’ lived experiences of mental health challenges “Things and the Mind” (In Press/publication pending) and has led research that engaged children in developing research skills through place-based education for sustainability (“Little Researchers” project). She created an inquiry graphics approach and method, which uses graphics or images of any kind (photos, collage, videos, paintings etc.) to explore different social and educational concepts and challenges. Natasa’s latest co-written book “Relational and Multimodal Higher Education” calls for a relational turn in higher education, within which knowledge practices develop through analysing how knowledge (its production, growth, dissemination, future) relate to three modalities of relations: social, digital and environmental/material, envisioning teachers and learners as educational futurologists.

Dr. Emily Spiers

Associate Director

Emily Spiers is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Futures. Their work focuses on future-oriented, innovative trends in communicative and literary practices. They explore how futures are being envisaged, anticipated and made through art and literature -- and how creative narratives can help articulate multiple futures in fields as diverse as defence, education and climate change.

They have worked with multiple government agencies and creative partners to articulate the importance of critically engaging with the world-building techniques that form the foundation of futures thinking and futures literacy.

Visit their page on Academia.edu or onTwitter.

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