wp2 / DC13
Envisioning future practices and institutions for just climate transitions
To investigate and integrate studies of co-design, curation, systems innovation and climate transitions to understand the potential for citizen co-creation. To design, produce, test and critically assess creative media outputs envisioning and articulating future practices and institutions for climate transitions for use in citizen engagement projects (practice research). To synthesise results and produce a conceptual framework for designers, businesses, government and civil society organisations using creative approaches. Expected results: Validated visual or media prototypes of future practices and institutions for climate transitions, with accompanying analysis.
Eugenia’s PhD research addresses limitations in current Participatory Futuring Processes (PFPs) used in just climate transition contexts. Although participatory futuring is increasingly applied in policy and governance settings, these processes are often implemented as short-term, expert-driven exercises with limited capacity to support sustained engagement or long-term impact. As a result, participants’ involvement frequently remains superficial, reducing the potential of PFPs to support anticipatory learning and collective sensemaking and capacity-building.
To address this gap, the research shifts focus from the outputs of futuring activities to the conditions that shape how participants experience and engage in them. Embodiment and resonance are used as analytical lenses to examine how relational dynamics, material arrangements, and organisational structures influence participants’ ability to sense, imagine, and meaningfully relate to possible futures, with particular attention to justice in climate transitions.
The research will generate a transferable framework and related creative outputs that articulate and materialise these conditions in actionable ways, supporting practitioners and public institutions in reframing PFPs from isolated interventions into ongoing infrastructures for anticipatory and collective learning across governance contexts.
This doctoral project will include mixed approaches of qualitative research, literature review, case study analysis, surveys, interviews, co-design workshops, data analysis, conceptual framework development, prototype development, validation of framework, practical recommendation development. MOME and the CoDesign4Transitions network will support the DC to obtain and develop skills required to conduct this research.
CHORA (Netherlands) (3 months) with mentor Emilia Lischke to explore opportunities for using creative, visual, spatial, three-dimensional, interactive methods to propose and explore future innovation spaces and practices for just climate transitions.
Democratic Society (Belgium) (6 months) mentor Elizabeth Calderon to share, test and evaluate the creative visual or media artefacts developed through practice research within a community deliberation project within DemSoc’s activities.
