Futures Lab 2020

SLU’s future platforms are characterized by inter-and multidisciplinary working methods with a focus on the future. The platforms identify and develop, through collaboration with relevant actors in society, new questions for research to support solutions to future challenges. The research within the Future Lab is connected to one or more of the thematic areas of SLU Urban Futures and SLU Future Food: urban sustainability and a sustainable food system.

The overall purpose of the SLU Futures Lab 2020 was to strengthen the participants’ ability to work with a future perspective in their research and to strengthen new transdisciplinary meetings and research questions. The more concrete goals were:

• Participants get a more profound understanding of working with a future perspective and how to implement it in practice.
• Participants themselves can use a future perspective to be able to identify and develop new research questions and projects.
• Participants can communicate future related issues nuanced and clear to different recipients, i.e. policymakers and financiers.

The structure of the Futures Lab was, largely, designed by the participants themselves. An initial series of seminars with invited lectures created the basis for the participants to be able to make (good) decisions regarding their project design. The lunch lectures were open to others interested at SLU and shared on YouTube. Thereafter, the participants' work with formulating and implementing a project proceeded. The project group met once every month to share experiences and give feedback on each other’s work.

Futures Lab 2020

The following researchers participated in the Futures Lab 2020: