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We are excited to invite you to participate in our “Dare the Future” mail art exhibition, which will be held during the National Futures Studies Conference in Naples, from September […]
WHAT SPACE LOGISTICS IN 2050? BIG PICTURES, TRENDS AND SCENARIOS IN THE EMERGING SPACE ECONOMY
What role does Space play in the evolution of the economy? And of humanity? How useful is it to anticipate possible future developments?
These are questions that until a few decades ago were of interest to a few experts or enthusiasts, but which today must be considered by companies, international organisations, and even voters. Technological accelerations in fact promise epochal developments: Space is a candidate to become a context of possible productive ecosystems, this will require the ability to manage and administer new levels of complexity to bring out desirable dynamics for human and planetary development, rather than new areas of conflict.
With this book we want to offer hints for possible answers and to make people think about strategic issues that will potentially affect everyone. For this we try to imagine and narrate a variety of possible futures, based on different sources (including opinions of authoritative experts from ESA, UN, and multinational companies) and original applications of strategic foresight methods (Horizon Scanning, Exploratory Scenarios, Causal Layered Analysis, Systems Archetypes). The ambition is to help anticipate and prepare desirable futures in the medium and long term and to disseminate an attitude of farsightedness.
THE REVIEW
“Pietro Guerrieri and Rocco Scolozzi have worked diligently to link systems thinking with space futures. However, while most books stay at the litany level extolling the virtues of space travel or arguing against space travel due to the problems on Earth, Guerrieri and Scolozzi take us further. Along with scenarios (space colonization, the missed spaceboat, Elysium – space for the few, and space wars), they use CLA to go deeper, to uncover the core assumptions of our space futures. This is likely the first use of CLA to space futures. The book truly becomes alive at his juncture. The authors move us from numerous litanies (nationalism, an exciting enterprise, a profitable context, and an environment to defend) to the systems that support these litanies, the worldviews that are used to make sense of them (no limits, the destiny of humanity) to the core metaphors. These include: the El Dorado and the Explorer, the Alchemical Philosopher’s stone, the Ark, and the Utopia.
All in all, a welcome book critical for understanding space futures.”
– Sohail Inayatullah – UNESCO Chair in Futures Studies. IIUM. Professor, Tamkang University. Editor, the Journal of Futures Studies, and researcher. Famous for introducing and pioneering the futures technique of causal layered analysis (CLA).
THE AUTHORS
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As for the past two years, also in 2023 the Center for European Futures launches a special issue of Futuri journal entirely devoted to the futures of Europe and of the international system. The aim of the issue is publishing theoretical, conceptual, methodological and empirical contributions that, through the perspective of Futures Studies, aspire to analyse the future scenarios of Europe and of the World. In this direction, we recommend studies that make use of methods within the field of Futures Studies and social forecasting – and/or that emphasise the long-term consequences, megatrend effects or multiple scenarios of the topics addressed.
The issue is thematically open: essays from different and (possibly) interdisciplinary approaches are solicited within different and heterogeneous fields: institutions and politics at the national, international and comparative level; economics (including political economy and labour policies) and society (including gender issues); cultures and languages; territorial cohesion, inequalities and/or demographic scenarios; new developments in specific fields such as ecology and the digital sphere, or the new arms race.
Theoretical and empirical analyses specifically addressing the possible future developments of European integration process – and the European Union more broadly – are welcome. Also in this last case, analyses can encompass virtually all aspects of EU integration and its institutional complex: common foreign and security policy, the internal market and/or international trade, environmental policies, interventions such as the NextGenerationEU and its policy implications, political parties and Europe, institutions and integration between systems, and gender issues within and outside institutions.
Deadline and publication schedule
- 25 February: Submission of abstracts*
- 3 March: Notification of selected abstracts
- 30 April: Submission of articles
- 31 May: Feedback from peer-review process
- 30 June: Submission of articles revised in the light of referees’ suggestions
- July 2022: Publication of the special issue
Instructions for authors
For any information, including content, on Futures Studies, authors interested in publishing in the issue should contact the series editor at the following e-mail address: a.cozzolino@europeanfutures-iif.it.
Abstracts, of between 200 and 350 words, must contain the main indications on the topics to be addressed, theoretical and possibly methodological perspectives. They must also be accompanied by a short biography of the authors.
Articles can be in Italian or English. The evaluation of contributions in this issue will be subject to a participatory double-blind referencing mode: authors agree to evaluate at least one contribution from another author. Articles must be between 25,000 and 35,000 characters (including spaces and bibliography). The bibliography, cited with the American author-data system within the text, will be written following the examples below:
- Arnaldi S., Poli R. (a cura di), La previsione sociale – Introduzione allo studio dei futuri, Carocci, Roma, 2012.
- Beckert J., Imagined futures: Fictional expectations in the economy, “Theory and Society”, vol. 42 n. 3, 2013.
- Campa R., Un decalogo per la tecnoetica, “Futuri”, 11 maggio 2020: http://www.futurimagazine.it/dossier/un-decalogo-per-la-tecnoetica/
- Fucile G., E rimarrà solo un apriscatole. Cultura del consumo e apocalissi letterarie, in Paura R., Verso F. (a cura di), Antropocene. L’umanità come forza geologica, Future Fiction, Roma, 2018.
Within the text, quotations will be made using the following: «». Footnotes should be limited to the essential and in any case should not be used for bibliographical references. Please include also a short abstract (750-1000 charachters).
FUTURI is a six-monthly journal on futures studies published by the Italian Institute for the Future. It is recognised as a scientific journal in Italian academic system for “Area 14” (Political and Social Sciences).
At the end of the European project “Youth Voices Matter – YMOVE”, are now available the analyses and recommendations carried out by the participants in the project on the topics of youth unemployment, education and training, climate change.
The project Youth Voices Matter – “Y-MOVE” is a transnational initiative for young people from three different countries: Greece, Italy, and Spain. The main aim of the project is to empower youth’s active participationin the policy-making process. The main objectives of the project are:
– to raise awareness and to strengthen activecitizenship attitudes;
– to reinforce youth participation and engagement insocial, civic, and political life;
– to increase active and informed participation in thedemocratic decision-making process;
– and to improve the interpersonal competencies ofyoung people.
The method followed in this project is the structured dialogue and a participatory approach, to develop a connection and a dialogue between youth and policymakers. This booklet is the result of the simulation of the policy creation process in the format of round-table discussions. Inputs were previously given to the participants through the presentations of relevant topics by experts and through non-formal education learninga ctivities.
The project was a joint effort of EKO Greece – Entrepreneurship and Social Economy Group (Greece), the Italian Institute for the Future (Italy), and LAS NIÑAS DEL TUL (Spain). Each of the three countries was represented by a team of 13 young participants (18-30 years old) and two decision-makers/experts in the field of main project topics. The two decision-makers/experts were the facilitators during the round-tables session.
The final document presents a summary of the analysis conducted by the participants and the recommendations proposed, including:
For the issue of youth unemployement:
– Stricter & more regular public inspections
– New legal figure of Advisor/Tutor foryoung employees
– Resize classrooms
– Dual examination
– Longer high quality paid internshipsfor all
For the issues of education and training:
– Taking the model of dual education
– Creation of education curricula in cooperation with the private sector
– Soft Skills in Academic Curricula
– Facilitate the connection between what teachings and labor market
– Mandatory pedagogical training
– European Teaching Evaluation System
– Teacher Training Bonus
For the issues of climate changes:
– Increase accessibility to smart multimodal mobility
– Encourage individual virtuous choices in urban and extra-urban mobility
– Invest in educational programs about smart mobility
Since 2020, the pandemic and closure of cultural venues across the EU have made the precariousness of the sector even more evident. In response, the commons have been arenas of transformation and communities of resistance for social relations and culture, “as a way to create empathy, give voice to the voiceless, overcome social distance and the emptiness of public spaces”.
“Healing culture, reclaiming commons, fostering care” presents the cultural policy proposal born from a participatory research within the community of l’Asilo (www.exasilofilangieri.it), conducted between May 2020 and May 2021 by a research team composed of academics from different disciplines, artists and activists, in connection with social movements.
The reflection starts from an experience of commoning to suggest bottom-up actions and recommendations for the European Union to give voice to commoners and workers themselves in cultural policies, promote inclusive decision-making and guarantee support for groups made even more fragile by Covid-19. The theory is enriched by examples of grassroots empowerment such as La Tela, a collaborative digital artwork, and the artist residencies in Roccaporena, as a project of social cohesion and innovation to build an empathic connection between artists and inhabitants in the internal areas.
Such proposals question us and act as a bridge towards a sustainable cultural production, capable of fostering principles of cohesion, equality and solidarity.
Since its creation just over a year ago, the Center for European Futures (CEF) has been working to establish itself as a dynamic and ongoing forum for engaged discussion and debate over the future(s) of Europe and of the European Union, as well as to promote the application of Future Studies to European and International affairs. Based on this aim, the CEF is delighted to announce the launch of an open and permanent call for research/working papers, to be published within its Research Paper series.
The call is open both to early career and senior scholars. We welcome all topics potentially falling into the field of the Social Sciences (including philosophy of science), that:
- Directly or indirectly concern the European space, thus involving politics, society, institutions, culture and the commons, political economy, gender studies, and the arts among others.
- Reflect on the future(s) of specific topics and issues (e.g., the futures of European integration, environment, the futures of the commons).
- Propose ‘exercises of future(s)’, namely exercises in imagining and re-imagining more or less specific aspects of the possible futures of Europe, the EU, and European societies.
In terms of length and style, the Research Papers are ideally rigorous pieces of research and analysis written in a clear, reader-friendly and concise way in order to help sharing ideas. The length of the papers is around 6000 to 8000 words, comprising notes and bibliography. All papers are peer-reviewed by the members of the editorial board of the Center for European Futures and/or of the journal Futuri.
The papers will be published with the ISBN of the Italian Institute for the Future Press, and selected ones will be re-published as chapters in the Yearbook of the Center for European Futures (published once a year).
If you are interested in proposing a research paper, please send an email with your name and institutional affiliation (if any), short bio (no CV needed), a working title and a 500-word abstract to: info@europeanfutures-iif.com
The Center for Near Space of the Italian Institute for the Future has established in 2019 an annual award dedicated to university students to stimulate them to their reflections on the expansion of humanity in space that has already begun and that will see in the very near future the development of ordinary life in Earth and lunar orbit and/or on the surface of our natural satellite. The thesis work will have to be developed within the Vision of the CNS and specifically on one of the following themes identified by the Scientific Committee of the CNS:
- Transparent plastic materials resistant to space conditions.
- Space additive manufacturing: the next 30 years.
- Future full closed-loop ECLSS (Environmental Control and Life Support Systems).
- Radiation protection: water systems and bacteria cultures.
- OrbiTecture: future spatial environments according to the anthropocentric approach.
- Aspects and psychological effects of living in OrbiTecture’s environment.
- Innovative propulsion systems (RBCC, ramjets, hybrid engines, etc.).
- Space Law: exploitation of resources and life in space.
- Launch Systems: study of a Hyplane configuration for Low Earth Orbit launch.
- Connected systems, Internet and big data in the Cislunar City.
- Composite and antibacterial materials for space use.
- Energy Harvesting of Mars dust.
The thesis can be requested and developed at any university department, public or private, of technical-scientific, social-humanistic or artistic orientation. It can alternatively be asked to CNS at info@nearspace-iif.it, indicating the theme of interest and the city of preference. The university lecturer will be accompanied by a co-rapporteur of the Center for Near Space, and will have to involve a company through a company tutor. The thesis must be sent to info@nearspace-iif.it by November 15. The Scientific Committee of the CNS will select the best thesis and award them by the end of the year at a national event that will be informed in time. POSTER ANNONUCEMENT
