READ Research seminar: Imagining transformations to sustainability and justice: transcending reality or constraining possibilities?

Transformations to sustainability and justice will require a range of capacities to navigate the multi-dimensional and multi-generational nature of transformations. In this session, I will explore the potential role of imagination as one of those capacities, recognizing imagination as the interdependent cognitive and comprehensive social processes that generate shared understandings of the past, present, and visions of possible futures. In recent years, major developments have advanced some of the “techniques of futuring” with results about the diverse range of methods and processes that are meaningful for building imagination capacity now showing patterns. This session will focus on at least three patterns related to transformative agency and the inseparability of power with imagination, the challenges of expressing and communicating that which is imagined, and the empirical evidence of how imagination of futures contributes to concrete, practical changes in the present.

Bio:

Michele-Lee Moore is the Director of Transdisciplinary Education and Deputy Science Director at the Stockholm Resilience Centre. Primarily, Moore’s research focuses on the topics of transformative agency, social-ecological systems resilience, and social and governance innovations. Her work on transformative agency and capacity explores the role of networks, reflexivity, emergence, and most recently, imagination in supporting transformations to sustainability and justice. Moore’s work centres multiple ways of knowing, relationships (human-human, and human-nonhuman), and healing the past to support alternative futures.