FLiNT’s key area of expertise is the use of narrative and story for envisaging and communicating possible futures in rigorous and impactful ways.
We form part of a national network of government policy-makers, practitioners, and academics with special interests in futures thinking and creative futures methods.
Our work is informed by practical insights into what UNESCO defines as ‘Futures Literacy’, developed through our research collaborations with a number of national government agencies and initiatives. This includes work with the UK’s Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), the National Centre for Cyber Security (NCSC), the Research Institute in Sociotechnical Cyber Security (RISCS), the Institute for Social Futures (ISF) at Lancaster University, the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), the Olaf Stapledon Centre for Speculative Futures, and the UK Governmental Futures Community of Practice.
Our research and practice sets out the importance of narrative in framing, shaping, and critiquing the scenarios and world-building techniques that form the foundations of twenty-first century futures thinking and foresight.
Genevieve Liveley is Professor of Classics, RISCS Fellow, and Turing Fellow at the University of Bristol. She is a narratologist with particular research interests in narratives and narrative theories (both ancient and modern), and their impact on futures thinking. She is the author of Narratology (OUP 2019) and has published a number of books and articles examining the stories that programme cultural and sociotechnical narratives about human interactions with new technology.
g.liveley@bristol.ac.uk
Will Slocombe is a Reader in English
and Co-Director of the Olaf Stapledon Centre
for Speculative Futures at the University of Liverpool. His research focuses on speculative and science fictions, particularly fictions of technology and representations of Artificial Intelligence. He is interested in
how speculative futures narratives provide a repository of ready-made scenarios as well as how different narrative genres, modes, and forms can be used to enhance the communication of novel concepts.
w.slocombe@liverpool.ac.uk
Emily Spiers is Co-Director of the Institute for Social Futures and Senior Lecturer in Creative
Futures at Lancaster University. Her work focuses
on future-oriented, innovative trends in communicative and literary practices. She explores how futures are being envisaged, anticipated and made through art and literature – and how creative narratives can help articulate multiple possible futures in
fields as diverse as defence, education and climate change.
e.spiers@lancaster.ac.uk