The event is organized on site at Tampere University, Finland, on 23–24 April 2026.
Confirmed keynote speakers are Associate Professor Sjoerd-Jeroen Moenandar, University of Groningen (The Netherlands) and Associate Professor Marina Lambrou, Kingston University (UK).
Full programme will be published at a later date.
International and Interdisciplinary Symposium on Future Narratives across Media
In contemporary public discourse, from news media to political speech and various cultural commentators, our present era is commonly characterized as a time of deep uncertainty, turbulence and transition. Recent descriptors and media buzzwords like ‘polycrisis’ and ‘permacrisis’ denote a complex tangle of interconnected and mutually amplifying crises, back-to-back and seemingly never-ending. In this cultural climate, future-oriented storytelling and scenario-making flourishes across media, from dystopian and utopian fiction to policy briefs, science communication, marketing, and journalism. Used as a means for anticipating and preparing for possible future upheaval brought about by geopolitical conflicts, new pandemics, ramifications of new technologies, climate change, or other societal, political and economic developments, these future narratives play a significant role in public imagination at the moment. They may facilitate action in the present by enabling us to imagine possible futures, but may also delineate what kinds of futures we are capable of imagining as possibilities, individually and collectively.
The “Future Narratives Across Media” -symposium seeks to initiate an interdisciplinary conversation on this future-oriented media-cultural climate. The symposium is organized by the research project “Journalistic Future Narratives in and about NATO-era Finland” together with Narrare Centre for Interdisciplinary Narrative Studies at Tampere University.
The symposium will tackle topics like:
- stories about possible futures across various forms of public discourse: journalism, political speech, popular culture, and more
- future imaginaries of e.g. climate change, new technologies, conflicts, and local, national, and global politics
- future narratives and imaginaries in various countries and cultures
- political ramifications and uses of projecting visions of the future
- uses and misuses of future narratives: e.g. planning, preparation, information, but also manipulation, propaganda, fearmongering
- the roles and limits of narrative form and storytelling as a tool for future-oriented thinking
- dystopian and utopian futures
- fictional and non-fictional forms of future narratives and scenario-making
- future-oriented storytelling and scenario-making as knowledge-creation in various fields, including e.g. policymaking, military planning, climate science, marketing, and economic forecasting
- the epistemic standards, credibility and value of future-oriented knowledge