CoFutures: Pathways to Possible Presents

Project Information

COFUTURES

Grant agreement ID: 852190

DOI

10.3030/852190

Project closed

EC signature date 11 October 2019

Start date 1 January 2020

End date 31 December 2024

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 319 219,00

EU contribution

€ 1 319 219,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITETET I OSLO
Norway

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - COFUTURES (CoFutures: Pathways to Possible Presents)

Reporting period: 2024-07-01 to 2024-12-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

CoFutures is a project aimed at developing a theory for the study of futurisms from 2001- present. These futurisms, including Afrofuturisms, Africanfuturisms, Arabfuturisms, Gulf-futurisms, Sinofuturisms, Indofuturisms, Desifuturisms, Latin American, and Latinxfuturisms, occur in different media, occur in multiple languages, and are distributed globally. This creates unique theoretical and methodological challenges as there is no singular way to understand the plurality of these futurisms. The main objectives of the project are to understand and map these futurisms, and especially explore how they relate to contemporary societal challenges of climate change, demographic change, and technological change.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

The CoFutures team has so far published numeroujournal and book articles in leading venues (such as Science Fiction Studies, Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, Foundation, Springer, Routledge), edited two journal special issues (Utopian Studies, Vector), produced several books with leading publishers (such as MIT Press, Routledge, Tordotcom), and has many books in the pipeline under contract (Chicago UP, Routledge). The team has conducted fieldwork in a dozen countries and interviewed over 200 creators of contemporary futurisms. We have organized two major conference, "Futures from the Margins" and "Community Speculations and Technopolitics" (https://conference.cofutures.org) organized many open and closed webinars, and held several workshops. The project also received the ERC-Proof of Concept grant.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

A new theory of CoFuturisms, established in a multi-format network of outputs: books, handbooks, articles, translations, fiction, interviews, media, lecture library, etc.

Expected Results
Publications: 19 articles, one handbook, one methods book, two translation books, one monograph, two PhD theses.
Media: repository of interviews, lectures
Software: Ideaweb

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