“Empowering Futures – Long-term Governance, Democracy and Futures Research” is the 23rd international Futures Conference – Futures Conference 2023 – organized by the Finland Futures Research Centre and the Finland Futures Academy, University of Turku, Finland, hosting the Finland Node of The Millennium Project.

The conference will take place in a hybrid mode in June 14-16, 2023 in Turku, Finland. Conference days Wednesday 14 and Thursday 15 of June 2023 will be held on-site in Turku and partly online. Friday 15 of June will be held exclusively in virtual mode. The program will consist of keynote lectures, parallel sessions, participatory workshops and a chaired poster session. The conference will aim to generate multidisciplinary, stimulating and critical discussions that promote networking between people interested in futures issues from different backgrounds and perspectives.

The call for papers, posters, and workshops is now open. There is an urgent need for long-term futures thinking in order to sustain possibilities for alternative and creative solutions to complex crises and empower futures. For the next Futures Conference, the Helsinki Node will gather in Turku to discuss about the futures of democracy, trust, power and sustainability, which are tightly connected to these crises. These topical issues will be discussed in an interdisciplinary manner, on how we see futures and how futures studies can empower people, societies, and organisations for creating more just and sustainable futures. The conference will elaborate upon general sustainability and resilience challenges in the current turbulent situation of world politics.

The understanding of systemic complexity and wide phenomena, as well as problems and issues such as climate change, international security, policy-making, well-being, and technological innovations, can be seen as the focus of futures studies. Research on these topics and creating solutions for them are carried out in inter- and transdisciplinary approaches within the field. Furthermore, it is a shared understanding and emphasis that those actions we took in the past and those we take in the present shape the future. In addition, how we look at the future, shapes our actions in the present.

The Helsinki Node invites researchers, practitioners and alike from universities, research institutes, companies, governmental and non-governmental organisations to submit your abstracts (max. 300 words) no later than 31 January 2023.

Key topics of the conference are: Futures of democracy: states and transnational organisations; Long-term governance and actions in the present; Creative empowerment for social change; Impacts, risks and discontinuities: new imaginations and imaginaries; Anti-oppressive practices in academia and futures research: antiracism, feminism, equal rights and empowerment of the oppressed; Empowerment through inclusion; Foresight and futures research for just transitions; Sustainability and future generations; Complexity and systems thinking; Participatory approaches in futures research; Methodological development of futures studies,

For information, please contact the Conference Secretariat via futuresconference@utu.fi or visit futuresconference2023.com.

“Visions make it possible to create a future that is different from the present although its seeds are in the present”

Eleonora Barbieri Masini (2006)