In September 2021, we gathered online for the 7th Annual Asia-Pacific Futures Network (APFN) Conference titled “Recipes for Change: Co-Creating Post-Pandemic Futures Today”. The conference focused on fostering the co-creation of equitable, inclusive, and sustainable futures for Asia-Pacific and beyond.
We tasted many dishes from the full menu ranging from future studies theoretical evolution to actual experiences of using the futures approach in tourism, higher education, the Blue Pacific Continent, fake news, climate change, post-normal pandemics, social media, natural disasters, youths, food, citizens, conflict transformation, the Philippines, and more. We introduced numerous methods and tools for advancing future literacy. They include games, applications, quizzes, and well-designed and well-facilitated open discussions. The conference generated countless interesting new ideas, approaches, and profound reflections about the world, our systems, human nature, and where we are heading.
We could taste all the above because we all co-produced the menu. All the dishes and recipes were put together by us. And because we were a mix of academics, policymakers, practitioners, early and veteran learners, young and not so young people from all kinds of backgrounds, the dishes were very flavorful, especially when we agreed to disagree and when we discovered new flavors from the interactions. Like all good meals, we all want to have the recipes in writing, in other words, a cookbook!
We would like to invite you to document the ideas, key points, debates, cases, nuances, methods, reflections, unfinished stories, open-ended enquiries, questions answered and the key discussions. This would capture the conference for a wider audience and further advance the development of our collective recipes.
The Journal of Futures Studies is hosting the platform for our cookbook. Thus, we are calling for papers for this special issue based on the conference. As you were a contributor to the conference, you are strongly encouraged to put your speech, the session you facilitated, or the presentation you made, into an article for this special issue. As a participant, if you have an exciting idea inspired by APFN, you are also welcome to contribute. Join us in documenting the stories we passionately discussed so that they become the seeds for a brighter and more sustainable future.
Paper submissions can be:
- Essays – 2000-3000 words in length (including references). Essays are expected to provide new viewpoints and visions, expressed through strong and intelligent prose.
- Reports– 3000-4000 words in length (including references). Reports are expected to provide coverage of future studies related events (conferences, meetings, facilitated processes).
- Articles– 4000-7000 words in length (including references). Articles are expected to make novel contributions to the futures studies field, build on the corpus of futures literature, be evidentially strong and develop clear themes and arguments. Articles are double-blind peer-reviewed.
All papers should include material related to Futures Studies from other scholars’ works, such as those found in the Journal of Futures Studies, Futures, Foresight, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, The European Journal of Futures Research, World Future Review and On the Horizon.
Deadlines:
Abstract (500 words) submission deadline: February 10, 2022
Submission of the full paper deadline: March 30, 2022
Please send your abstracts to:
ora-orn.p@cmu.ac.th and 50000action@gmail.com
Note: You will receive a notification of acceptance after submitting your abstract- inviting your full paper submission here — https://ojs.jfsdigital.org/index.php/jfs/about/submissions
JFS Special Issue Guest Editors:
Ora-orn Poocharoen (School of Public Policy, Chiang Mai University, Thailand)
Seongwon Park (National Assembly Futures Institute, Korea)
About the Guest Editors
Ora-orn Poocharoen is the founding Director of the School of Public Policy at Chiang Mai University (Jan 2018 to present). She is former United Nation’s Committee of Experts for Public Administration (CEPA) (Jan 2018 – July 2021). Her current research interests are in public policy, public management, sustainable governance, wellbeing, and the public sector. She has spearheaded numerous workshops on strategic foresight covering topics from higher education, travelling, innovation landscape, to Thailand’s governance systems. Her organization has developed and executed foresight training programs that blend critical approaches, complexity thinking, creativity, and design thinking to strategic foresight. Her work aims to influence policymakers and public officials to adopt new mindsets to be more open to new possibilities. She holds a PhD in Public Administration from the Maxwell School, Syracuse University. She was an Assistant Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School, National University of Singapore for 8 years.
Seongwon Park is working as a futurist at the National Assembly Futures Institute in Korea. His main interests are emerging issue analysis, people’s preferred futures, and the mid- to long-term forecasting. He holds a PhD in the Department of Political Science, University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA. He was a former a research fellow at the futures research center of Science and Technology Policy Institute and taught futures studies at Korea Advanced Institute Science and Technology(KAIST), and currently teaches the theories and practices of futures studies at the Department of Sociology, Kookmin University in Korea. He received the Best Paper Award from the Journal of Futures Studies in 2013 and the Outstanding Young Futurist Award from the World Futures Studies Federation in 2017.
