{"id":1478,"date":"2026-03-03T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/education\/?p=1478"},"modified":"2026-03-03T10:49:18","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T10:49:18","slug":"thinking-about-death-for-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/education\/thinking-about-death-for-the-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Thinking about death for the future"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>By <a href=\"https:\/\/people.uwe.ac.uk\/Person\/Verity6Jones\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/people.uwe.ac.uk\/Person\/Verity6Jones\">Dr Verity Jones<\/a>, Associate Professor in Education<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Recently, much of my thinking, particularly in collaboration with <a href=\"https:\/\/profiles.cardiff.ac.uk\/staff\/bearck\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/profiles.cardiff.ac.uk\/staff\/bearck\">Chris Bear<\/a> (Cardiff University), has led me to think more deeply about <em>death<\/em> as an ecological, educational and ethical concept that demands a futures lens. In our work on food systems, we ask what it would mean to attend to the deaths of non-human animals and plants &#8211; \u00a0not as abstractions but as lived relations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In February, I attended the Centre for Sociodigital Futures, Immersive Public Futures Symposium, where themes of loss, endings, disappearance and possibility threaded through discussions of how societies imagine, design and negotiate futures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>International perspectives on imagining futures<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Contributions from international speakers underscored that futures &#8211; thinking is rarely a smooth trajectory of progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/mestradosustentabilidade.usuarios.rdc.puc-rio.br\/en\/docente\/prof-dr-fabio-rubio-scarano\/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/mestradosustentabilidade.usuarios.rdc.puc-rio.br\/en\/docente\/prof-dr-fabio-rubio-scarano\/\">Fabio Rubio Scarano<\/a> (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro\/Museum of Tomorrow)<\/strong>\u00a0foregrounded planetary change and regeneration through anticipating and paying attention both to memory and tomorrow.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/adelaideuni.edu.au\/people\/Lisa.Bailey\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/adelaideuni.edu.au\/people\/Lisa.Bailey\">Lisa Bailey <\/a>(Museum of Discovery, University of South Australia)<\/strong>\u00a0explored how museums can engage diverse publics with complex and uncertain futures.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/andrea-bandelli\/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/andrea-bandelli\/\">Andrea Bandelli<\/a> (Woven Foundation for Creative Climate Communication)<\/strong>\u00a0challenged us to recognise immersion not as a technical medium but as a <em>condition<\/em>\u00a0&#8211; a relational mode that shapes how we encounter the world and its potential futures and agencies.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/people.uwe.ac.uk\/Person\/MandyRose\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/people.uwe.ac.uk\/Person\/MandyRose\">Mandy Rose<\/a> (UWE Bristol)<\/strong>\u00a0discussed documentary and digital cultures as tools for imagining post\u2011carbon possibilities through planty immersion.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/designmuseum.org\/about-the-museum\/directorate\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/designmuseum.org\/about-the-museum\/directorate\">Justin McGuirk<\/a> (Design Museum, London)<\/strong>\u00a0examined design-led approaches to futures and the need to construct possible future buildings to imagine within.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/norwichuni.ac.uk\/about-us\/meet-our-staff\/professor-dan-lockton\/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/norwichuni.ac.uk\/about-us\/meet-our-staff\/professor-dan-lockton\/\">Dan Lockton<\/a> (Norwich University of the Arts)<\/strong>\u00a0reflected on how lost futures can help people collaboratively reimagine alternative futures.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lunduniversity.lu.se\/lucat\/user\/c87accee66495267094c2f1111418f96\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.lunduniversity.lu.se\/lucat\/user\/c87accee66495267094c2f1111418f96\">Johannes Stripple<\/a> (Lund University)<\/strong>\u00a0used speculative ecology and storying \u00a0to unsettle fixed narratives of crisis and change.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Across these contributions, there was an insistence that imagining futures requires attending to what is disappearing, threatened or already lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Connections<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The symposium strongly resonated with work with my own research. Whether supporting young women in imagining near-future careers in construction and engineering, examining ecological timescales in food ethics, or analysing how children\u2019s literature either narrows or expands temporal imagination, much of my work is centrally concerned with how learners inhabit and negotiate time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This sits alongside collaborations with colleagues at the <a href=\"https:\/\/globalgoals.org\/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/globalgoals.org\/\">Global Goals Centre<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/sparksbristol.co.uk\/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/sparksbristol.co.uk\/\">SPARKS Bristol<\/a>, where we co-create learning experiences that are research\u2011informed, inclusive, socially engaged and committed to widening imaginative possibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Looking ahead<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The symposium has sharpened my thinking on how endings and futures coexist &#8211; and how education must hold both. Several publications drawing on this work, including research on identity making, children\u2019s literature and sustainable education, are currently in preparation and will be shared later this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Dr Verity Jones, Associate Professor in Education Recently, much of my thinking, particularly in collaboration with Chris Bear (Cardiff University), has led me to think more deeply about death as an ecological, educational and ethical concept that demands a futures lens. In our work on food systems, we ask what it would mean to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/education\/thinking-about-death-for-the-future\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Thinking about death for the future&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47,"featured_media":1487,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":346,"footnotes":""},"categories":[265,346,17,51,104,362,46],"tags":[211,325,365,77,78,324,262,88],"class_list":["post-1478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts-based-research","category-conference","category--early-education-and-learning","category-global-and-sustainable-education","category-researching-with-children-and-young-people","category-sustainability-in-research","category-sustainable-futures","tag-ecrg","tag-global-goals-centre","tag-immersive-public-futures-symposium","tag-primary-schools","tag-secondary-schools","tag-sparks-bristol","tag-uwe-bristol","tag-verity-jones"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1478"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1486,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1478\/revisions\/1486"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}