The project Global Foresight aims to explore future foresight practices in selected organizations to gain a deeper understanding of the cultural rationalities and knowledge that underpin scenarios and models for future governance. The project recognizes that scenarios for the future have the power to shape perceptions of global problems and solutions, influence organizational agendas, and impact decision-making and resource allocation. They are, in other words, potentially performative. By uncovering the underlying assumptions in these endeavors, the project aims to contribute to the social sciences and humanities.

Within the project, Garsten focuses on examining anticipatory governance initiatives and forecasting in think tanks. The objective is to understand the types of knowledge and scenario-building templates used in envisioning the future. Garsten investigates the technologies and tools employed, such as ethnographic research, metric data sets, expert workshops, online games, and digital visualizations, which help make potential futures more tangible. The project seeks to analyze the cultural assumptions and rationalities involved in creating and implementing these tools, the knowledge that establishes their legitimacy, and how they contribute to shaping future forms of governance.

Christina Garsten is a Professor of Social Anthropology, Chair of the Executive Board of Score and the Principal of the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study (SCAS). Her research interests center around new forms of transnational governance, with a specific focus on the role of think tanks in shaping governance. Previous research explored organizational culture and its transnational dynamics, as well as organizational visions and practices related to transparency, accountability, and corporate social responsibility. Garsten has also studied policy changes in the labor market and forms of sociality in organizations. She holds various positions in academic and editorial boards and have affiliations with several prestigious institutions worldwide.

Adrienne Sörbom’s research investigates anticipatory governance practices in think tanks, research institutes, and NGOs. The focus is on understanding the knowledge and scenario-building techniques used to envision the future,
including ethnographic research, data sets, workshops, online games, and visualizations. It seeks to uncover the cultural assumptions, rationalities, and forms of knowledge underlying these practices and their impact on future and contemporary governance. Key questions revolve around the types of foresight models created, the professionals involved, the social practices surrounding these models, and the role of organizational context. Sörbom conducts ethnographic fieldwork, including participant observation and qualitative interviews, to gather insights.

Adrienne Sörbom is Professor of Sociology at Södertörn University and researcher at Score, Stockholm University’s multi-disciplinary research center. Her research interests encompass contemporary politics, globalization, social movements, and the intersection of politics and individualization.

Mark Maguire is interested in how the threatening near future is perceived, conceived and lived by security ‘experts’, from those working in security
agencies and institutions to those operating in broader networks. Within Global Foresight, he is exploring the ways in which the future is secured
in major critical infrastructure sites such as transport hubs and is especially interested in ethnographic and other detailed accounts of space and time factors in counter-terrorism training. As part of his project, Mark is working with colleagues in the security sector to explore the first ten minutes of terrorist attacks, in order to understand human behaviour and better prepare the public for the future.

Mark Maguire is Professor and Head of the Maynooth University Department of Anthropology. He researches different aspects of security, from new technologies and their deployments to terrorist threats and counterterrorism approaches. He is author of several books on migration. He is a convener
of The Anthropology of Security Network External link, opens in new window., a former editor of Social Anthropology, and he twice held visiting professorships in Stanford University, California.

Within Global Foresight, Mikkel Flyverbom’s research explores how digital technologies and ‘big data’ condition particular forms of knowledge in the context of anticipatory governance. Through empirical research, he investigates how digital, data-saturated organizations engage in future foresight activities and attempt to shape global governance efforts.

Mikkel Flyverbom is Professor of Communication and Digital Transformations at the Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. His research focuses on digital transformations, internet governance, transparency, and sociological questions about big data. In various projects and publications, he has explored how digital technologies shape communication and governance processes in organizational settings. More specifically, he is interested in how organizations engage with digital transformations, such as ‘big data’ and internet infrastructures that unsettle established ways of working and thinking. While he has a background in communication, his work also draws on insights from organization and management studies and sociology.

Ulrik Jennische, in collaboration with Adrienne Sörbom, is conducting an analysis of UNESCO and its Futures Literacy, FL, project. This initiative, which began in 2012, brings together futurists, researchers, and consultants
to enhance people’s capacity to ‘use the future.’ By deconstructing future images and their dependence on our anticipatory systems, FL aims to empower individuals to perceive alternatives and make informed decisions in the present. The research utilizes ethnographic data and documents to examine the FL program’s key assumptions and its intended role and impact at UNESCO. It seeks to comprehend the social forces driving development and the program's intended remedies for local and global social challenges. Additionally, Jennische, along with Christina Garsten, is investigating the significance of training and teaching futures thinking in the futures industry. With a background in social anthropology and political science, Jennische is a researcher at the Stockholm Centre for Organizational Studies and also teaches anthropology courses at Stockholm University. In the academic year 2023-24 he was a Junior Fellow-in-residence in the Global Horizons Fellowship Programme at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study.

Melissa Fisher, a cultural anthropologist, is a faculty member at Parsons School of Design at the New School and a Visiting Scholar at New York University’s Institute for Public Knowledge. Her contribution to the Global Foresight Project examines how workplace experts shape the design and experience of future workplace (in the context of pandemics, new technologies such as AI, and climate change) with a focus on the potential for either promoting equity or perpetuating hierarchies of class, race, gender, and power. Fisher’s study draws on a decade of fieldwork with professionals in facility management, corporate real estate, and architectural think tanks and design consultancies in Europe and the United States. She is also known for her expertise in organizational studies, globalization, technology, and work, as showcased in her articles as well as books Frontiers of Capital: Ethnographic Reflections on the New Economy (2006) and Wall Street Women (2012). Fisher’s ongoing research, teaching experience, and active involvement in gender-focused initiatives and advisory boards further contribute to her distinguished background in the field. She holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Cultural Anthropology from Columbia University.

For many years Douglas Holmes has investigated the emergence of contemporary fascism across Europe, a fascism that unfolds in our midst, at “eye-level.” Broadly, his work addresses how and why the most discredited ideas and sensibilities of the modern era—ideas that yielded the indelible horrors of the twentieth century—have become persuasive, compelling even, in the new century. More recently, he has turned his attention to the operations of central banks and the design of a distinctive monetary policy regime. In Stockholm, London, Wellington, and two venues in Frankfurt, he has spoken to bank personnel and to policy makers examining how they model the economy and the financial system with language, establishing a radically communicative and relational dynamic at the center of monetary affairs. Holmes is the author of an ethnographic trilogy: Cultural Disenchantments: Worker Peasantries in Northeast Italy (Princeton 1989); Integral Europe: Fast-Capitalism, Multiculturalism, Neofascism (Princeton 2000); and Economy of Words: Communicative Imperatives in Central Banks (Chicago 2014). He has also authored with George E. Marcus a series of texts exploring experiments in ethnographic collaboration particularly as they are achieved within cultures of expertise.

Afshin Mehrpouya, professor in and chair in accounting at the University of Edinburgh Business School, has extensively researched the influence of calculative knowledge, such as ratings and rankings, in business regulation. Recently, he has focused on the epistemic processes involved in healthcare rankings. In the Global Foresight Project, Mehrpouya contributes by examining the role of various calculative regimes in anticipation and regulatory intervention. His expertise in the sociology of knowledge in global governance sheds light on the production, dissemination, adaptation, and utilization of regulatory knowledge, as well as its relationship with time and organizational management.

David A. Westbrook’s contribution to the Global Foresight project explores the senses in which ‘the future’ can stand in for teleology, thus filling oft remarked lacunae in liberalism. He is also interested in how ostensibly participatory modes of projection can be used as techniques of management and even coercion, rule by ostensible consensus. Westbrook, Louis Del Cotto Professor at SUNY Buffalo Law School, thinks and writes about the social and intellectual consequences of contemporary political economy. His work influences numerous disciplines, and he has spoken on six continents to academics, business and financial leaders, members of the security community, civil institutions and governments, often with the sponsorship of the U.S. State Department. Among his many books and articles, perhaps the most relevant to this project are Navigators of the Contemporary: Why Ethnography Matters; Deploying Ourselves: Islamist Violence and the Responsible Projection of US Force; and Out of Crisis: Rethinking Our Financial Markets.

Jenny Andersson’s work in Global Foresight encompasses the rise of future consultancy activity from the 1970s onwards, analyzing the
competing institutes and tools developed by futurists and their impact on global development and business advice. She draws upon the sociology of expertise and studies on global communities of experts to explain this phenomenon. Through her interdisciplinary research group, she seeks to deepen our understanding of future governance and expertise in shaping our world.

Jenny Andersson is an economic historian and CNRS Research Professor at the Center for European Studies (CEE) in Paris and Professor at the Department of History of Science and Ideas at Uppsala University. Andersson’s research focuses on the institutionalization of future governance and the transnational history of futurists and their visions of the world. She conducts archival research and oral history interviews to trace the development of futures studies and the construction of institutions for future governance.

Dr. Peter Mancina is a cultural and political anthropologist who studies governmental power, policing, immigration control, everyday policy
implementation, and social movement organizing. He is a visiting scholar at Rutgers Law School Center for Immigration Law, Policy, and Justice, and research associate at the University of Oxford Centre for Criminology
and Border Criminologies program. His work has examined the manner in which ‘sanctuary city’ and ‘sanctuary state’ policies in the United States operationalize, moralize, and normalize local law enforcement protocols for assisting immigration enforcement authorities in deporting individuals convicted of crimes. He holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Vanderbilt University, and his work has been funded by the United States National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study, and the Rutgers Law School Pratt Fund. In addition to his academic work, Dr. Mancina serves as a consultant for non-profit organizations, local government policy-makers, and universities, and he has helped draft sanctuary city laws in San Francisco and for the region’s Bay Area Rapid Transit Authority. Dr. Mancina is writing a book titled Governing Mobility: Sanctuary City and the Future of Municipal Government examining three decades of local experimentation with implementing sanctuary city policies in San Francisco, California.

Anette Nyqvist’s research within Global Foresight focuses on global economic forecasting and scenario making. Her study aims to understand the professionals, practices, and ideas involved in these processes. Through ethnographic fieldwork, including participant observation and
qualitative interviews, among a team of economic forecasters at a reputable organization with significant influence in global economic forecasts, her project seeks to explore the main actors, tools, models, and assumptions used by economic forecasters and scenario makers, as well as the knowledge generated and how it is presented and disseminated.

Anette Nyqvist was Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at Stockholm University. Her research interests lied in the intersection of statecraft and market-making. She has made notable contributions to the anthropology of organizations and the anthropology of policy through publications such as Ombudskapitalisterna: Institutionella ägares röst och roll (Liber, 2015), Organisational Anthropology: Doing Ethnography in and Among Complex Organizations (co-authored with Professor Christina Garsten, Pluto Press, 2013), and Reform and Responsibility in the Re-making of the Swedish National Pension System: Opening the Orange Envelope (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). She was also involved in a research project funded by the Swedish Research Council, examining the responsible investment practices of major American pension funds.

Anette Nyqvist passed away in July 2021. She is deeply missed by the project team and beyond.

Darcy Pan joined the Department of Social Anthropology at Stockholm University in 2010 and received her doctorate in December 2016. Entitled “Laboring through uncertainty: an ethnography of the Chinese state, labor NGOs, and development,” Darcy’s PhD dissertation investigates how international development projects supporting labor activism work in contemporary China. Foregrounding the notion of uncertainty, Darcy studied how state control
is exercised by examining a specific logic of practices, discourses, and a mode of existence that constantly mask and unmask the state. More specifically, the study explores how uncertainty about the boundaries of permissible activism is generative of a sociopolitical realm in which variously positioned subjects mobilize around the idea of the state, which in turn leads to articulations and practices conducive to both self-censorship and a contingent space of activism. Darcy Pan joined the Global Foresight project in September 2016.

This project aims to enhance global governance by recognizing and understanding the political role of corporations in contemporary society. With increasing social expectations and accountability, especially in strategic industries, it is crucial to manage corporate political activities. The research explores how corporations have established corporate capitalism as a modern framework for social order and governance. The main question addressed is how anticipatory knowledge associated with corporate capitalism has enabled multinational corporations to assume social functions traditionally performed by the state while securing commercial success. Through ethnographic techniques and a focus on corporate political activities in Asian institutional contexts, the study delves into the creation of anticipatory knowledge, providing insights into professionals’ motivations, priorities, and aspirations. By unraveling the process of corporate politicization, it contributes to a deeper understanding of this phenomenon. In his role as Assistant Professor of Strategy at the Toulouse School of Management, Picard’s expertise in strategy dynamics and corporate political activities of multinational corporations in emerging economies, has contributed to the Global Foresight research programme.