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Workshop Report: “From Analysing the Present to Futuring”

On 28 and 29 May 2026, the interdisciplinary workshop “Von Gegenwartsanalysen zum Futuring. Methods for the Future-Oriented Generation of Practice and Knowledge” took place at the Haus der Wissenschaft in Bremen – a joint event organised by the ComAI research group (FOR 5656) and the Sociology of Knowledge section of the German Sociological Association (DGS).

The workshop opened on Thursday evening with a keynote by Annette Markham entitled “Creating Critical Junctures to Actualize Future Imaginaries”. Friday’s programme brought together talks, methodological insights and discussion rounds exploring a range of approaches to futuring – from interpretive forecasting and participatory methods to speculative design.

Several members of the ComAI research group contributed their own presentations: Michaela Pfadenhauer (University of Vienna) examined the epistemic limits and possibilities of interpretive future-making in her talk “Future as Think-Tank of the Possible: Interpretive Futuring at the Intersection to Fiction”. Juliane Jarke and Ren Aldridge (University of Graz) presented arts- and design-based approaches to participatory futures research under the title “Participatory Futuring and Arts-Based Approaches”. Leonie Winterpacht (University of Graz) explored how older people navigate between lived experience and anticipated technological futures in her contribution “Doing ‘Healthy’ Ageing in the Meantime: Negotiating Living Experiences and Anticipated Techno-Futures with ComAI”. Finally, Florian Hohmann (University of Bremen) offered a methodological insight into the research group’s Trend Scout approach in his presentation “Trend Scouts: Identifying Trends through Public Channels”.

The workshop provided a productive platform for interdisciplinary exchange on the possibilities and challenges of futuring methods in the social, media and communication sciences.