In our annual Futuring for Sustainability summer school, the Urban Futures Studio (UFS) asks: how do we navigate an era of political backlash and democratic decline? And what can we learn from the experiences and strategies of far-right and conservative movements? We address these questions using futuring, a novel approach to future-making pioneered by the UFS, and dramaturgy.
This year, our Futuring summer school will zoom in on the increasing vulnerability of democratic political systems. Between the escalating consequences of climate change and ecological collapse, changing geopolitical configurations, a tech-oligarchy, and increasing anti-democratic pressures, political prospects are deeply uncertain. More than at any time since the close of WWII, fundamental ideas such as freedom and democracy are being reimagined.
We find ourselves amidst a wave of populism, nativism, and environmental backsliding. The resistance to change is palpable. So deeply entrenched are our unsustainable aspirations that any attempt to question them is widely received as a threat to people’s freedom. The power of these aspirations raises an important question: are there perhaps lessons to learn from the far-right and conservatives about how to speak to people's yearnings and how to capture the future? Can we learn lessons, for example, about how to cultivate a sense of belonging? Or must a genuinely just movement develop and share images of the future in an entirely different manner?
Our starting point is to treat politics as fundamentally an act of collective faith: in the kinds of future that are perceived as possible and desirable. Futuring and dramaturgy can be understood as the techniques through which this collective faith is constructed, maintained, challenged, and transformed. Drawing on a range of breakthrough work developed within and beyond the Urban Futures Studio, we will take researchers and practitioners on a journey to understanding how the future gets captured and how we might begin to reclaim it. Texts include Captured Futures: Rethinking the Drama of Environmental Politics (Hajer & Oomen, 2025), which claims that our aspirations for the future have been captured by those with a vested interest in the status quo; and Dramaturgies of Change: Staging Political Transformation (Stacey, Oomen, Hoffman & Hajer 2025), which emphasises that there are certain symbols that shapes the futures people consider possible and desirable and identifies the dramaturgical means of convincingly reinterpreting these symbols.
About Futuring
Academic interest in ideas about 'future’ as an organising principle of social life is solidifying rapidly. As Jonathan White observes, an open future is a fundamental requirement of democratic decision-making (Whyte, 2024). In this futuring summer school, we put that interest in the future centre stage. Futuring is explicitly concerned with the politics of the future and how that relates to democracy. Taking the observation that ideas about the future are performative, we ask how imagined futures become influential. In the summer school, we introduce concepts such as:
techniques of futuring, investigating the practices through which imagined futures become politically influential;
captured futures, showing how cultural and political inability to imagine futures meaningfully different from the present – and the consequences for democracy;
futures prism, which describes how the relations we see between past, present, and future influences the political and policy choices we make in the present;
dramaturgical regimes, the ways in which all kinds of implicit conventions, constraints, and behavioural rules determine how politics is conducted;
dramaturgies of change, the ways in which we can use notions of symbolism, faith, and belonging to safeguard democracy and generate political change.
Through these concepts, we ask: how should we conduct and study political developments today? How does futuring help us academically, but also pragmatically? And how can we use futuring insights to help safeguard a sustainable future, for the planet and democracy.
We will offer a highly interdisciplinary faculty. Most are still to be determined. The faculty will include:
Dr. Jeroen Oomen (Utrecht University)
Prof. Dr. Maarten Hajer (Utrecht University)
Prof. Dr. Timothy Stacey (Utrecht University)
More to be announced
This course is aimed at graduate students from all disciplinary backgrounds, particularly advanced masters and doctoral students. We also welcome Postdocs and practitioners who are interested in futuring and sustainability. We ask applicants send their motivation letter or, alternatively, another creative approach to express their interest in this course (e.g. slides, video, storyboard) and include their C.V.
The course aims to provide participants with an overview of techniques of futuring as tools and processes through increased democratic participation and expanded imagination. Participants are equipped with the knowledge to understand and apply these techniques for further independent study and for addressing societal challenges, both as an academic methodology and as a political/policy endeavour. Drawing on a wide variety of literature, this summer school offers the Urban Futures Studio approach to shaping visions for desirable sustainable futures. We offer our interpretation of how to give those visions a social life, our take on making them affect processes in the real world. Throughout the summer school, questions of democracy and politics will be a central focus: who shape sustainable futures and how do they do so?
For those doing their PhD or with limited funding, some scholarships or fee waivers/reductions may be available. Scholarships are allocated on the basis of 1) availability of funds 2) merit 3) match to the course 4) representing an under-included discipline, institution, or background. Please reach out to the course coordinators if you have any questions.
The housing costs do not include a Utrecht Summer School sleeping bag. This is a separate product on the invoice. If you wish to bring your own bedding, please deselect or remove the sleeping bag from your order.
We welcome you to send us a motivation letter or alternatively send us another creative approach to express your interest in this course (e.g., slides, video, storyboard). Please also include your c.v.
Please note: unlike most other Utrecht Summer Schools, the Sustainabilty Futures summer school does not strictly work with a ‘first come, first serve’ system. We will periodically make a selection based on the motivation letter and the curriculum vitae. As soon as you apply, you will receive confirmation that we have received your application. Final decisions about acceptance may, however, take up to two weeks.
Please also note that we still encourage you to apply as soon as possible—we will start accepting people well ahead of the final deadline.
For this course you are required to upload the following documents when applying: