In-person public event (Great Hall, Marshall Building)
Monday 16 Jun 2025 10am to Thursday 03 Jul 2025 - 6pm
What will our futures look like? Featuring research from across the social sciences, this year’s Festival exhibition explored the people and communities, innovative technologies, challenges of today, and lessons from the past that are shaping the world to come.
This event was part of the LSE Festival: Visions for the Future running from Monday 16 to Saturday 21 June 2025, with a series of events exploring the threats and opportunities of the near and distant future, and what a better world could look like.
Projects on display:
GAWI is an award-winning virtual reality dream experience co-created by Myriam Hernandez (Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity) and the Rarámuri, an indigenous community of northern Mexico. Isabel, a Rarámuri leader, guides you through the places and ancestral traditions of her community – inviting us to (re)learn about their ways of caring for and loving the Earth.
In his new book, Artery: Racial Ecologies on Colombia’s Magdalena River, Professor Austin Zeiderman explores the past and present of one of the world’s great rivers, revealing the challenges of pursuing just and sustainable planetary futures. One story concerns the potential impact of a state-backed megaproject to transform the river into a logistics corridor. For some, the plan promised a more prosperous future for Colombia. But could it truly break free of enduring patterns of violence and exploitation, and extraction of natural resources? Who did this vision support, and who would be left behind?
Protecting and preserving the oceans – ‘blue sustainability’’ – is an environmental priority. But the way we treat sea creatures like sharks threatens this. Despite growing bans around the world on the brutal practice of shark finning, sharks are still eaten as a traditional, luxury food item. Dr Ronald Po’s research reveals the histories behind the emergence of shark fin consumption in late imperial China. Showing how traditions are made, his research suggests they can also be unmade, calling for us to urgently end shark fin consumption and adopt new sustainable practices.
Natural disasters across the world are being exacerbated by climate change, but what impact is that having on people and politics?
Research by Dr Kate Laffan, Nils Mallock and Dr George Melios in the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science highlights the proportions of people experiencing stress about climate change around the world, and maps the number of climate-related protests taking place in different countries.
Research by Dr António Valentim in the European Institute explores the potential impact of natural disasters and related protests on individuals’ political preferences, and on the behaviour of political parties in Europe and Brazil.
People experiencing homelessness and addiction face significant barriers when trying to access residential treatment. But when it comes to recovery opportunities, there is a huge cost to doing nothing. These costs affect individuals, ripple through communities, and impact healthcare systems, social services and the economy.
Dr Michela Tinelli is working with various stakeholders to develop the Care Quality Evaluation (CQE) platform, a digital tool to enhance decision-making in health and social care. Michela’s collaboration with The People’s Recovery Project (TPRP) is using CQE visualisations to evidence the tremendous benefits of investing more in residential treatment for homelessness and addiction. By joining the dots between charities, policymakers, researchers, data scientists, community members, national bodies and care providers, the CQE platform shows how we can drive cost-effective recovery solutions.
Millions of people across the UK experience a lack of security in areas like money, housing, health and care. When these insecurities build and combine, it multiplies their effects. Experiencing a lack of security across different areas can impose emotional burdens, harm wellbeing and keep people out of the workforce. Multiple insecurities force a focus on short-term crisis management, rather than long-term planning for the future.
A multidisciplinary team of researchers, led by Professor Becky Tunstall and including LSE’s Laura Lane, Dr Abigail McKnight and Irene Bucelli, have explored how multiple insecurities affect life chances and wellbeing and how joined-up policy could help. As part of their research, they spoke to 36 people experiencing multiple insecurities in four deprived neighbourhoods in Sheffield, Milton Keynes, and Mablethorpe. Artist Laura Sorvala’s illustrations capture the impact of insecure lives and the policy interventions that could help build more secure futures.
The world faces multiple complex and systemic challenges, from poverty and inequality to environmental degradation and health crises. Bold, impact-focused organisations are championing innovative solutions to address these problems, but very few (if any) are at the scale needed.
100x, a global impact initiative, based at LSE, believe that rapidly scaling social innovation is not just possible but essential. They exist to answer a simple yet profound question: what does it take to scale the impact of social innovations so they can reach hundreds of millions of people?
What might the rapid developments in stem cell research mean for our future, and what are the ethical questions that we need to grapple with along the way? In her current project, Professor Emily Jackson, LSE Law School, in collaboration with The Liminal Space created a speculative healthcare product, Cell Yourself, to imagine a future where stem cell technology enhances our lives and spark discussion about what the ethical boundaries of this research should be.
Discussions about the future of human interaction with digital technologies are more prevalent than ever, but there is an urgent need for deeper conversations with young people, for whom technology plays a crucial role in their lives.
This project by the Digital Futures for Children (DFC) centre highlights the importance of involving children, through co-design and participatory methodology, in identifying the priorities and action needed for a more sustainable and rights-respecting digital future for all children around the world.
A single policy intervention can have hundreds of impacts – large and small, intended and unintended, positive and negative. The project supported by the LSE Data Science Institute with Dr Alexandra Gomes
(LSE Cities) and her team in partnership with the Ordnance Survey (OS) and the NHS England, highlights the importance of understanding the complexity of data-driven systems behind health and wellbeing interventions.
Some people earn more, live longer, or have better access to education — but how big are these gaps? And do we see them clearly? This display allows visitors to explore what they believe is fair, how their views compare to others, and how accurate their perceptions of inequality are.
Research by the at LSE’s International Inequalities Institute looks at how people perceive– or misperceive – inequalities across many domains of life, including income, wealth, health and education. They also study the fairness view and factors that explain different views and attitudes towards inequality.
Large language models (LLMs) provide an opportunity to conduct qualitative interviews at a large scale, with thousands of respondents, creating a powerful bridge between qualitative and quantitative methods. Professor Xavier Jaravel and Dr Friedrich Geiecke (STICERD) have developed a simple and versatile open-source platform for AI-led interviews, exploring the benefits of such an approach, particularly when examining complex or polarising topics.
LSE holds a wide range of events, covering many of the most controversial issues of the day, and speakers at our events may express views that cause offence. The views expressed by speakers at LSE events do not reflect the position or views of The London School of Economics and Political Science.
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LSE holds a wide range of events, covering many of the most controversial issues of the day, and speakers at our events may express views that cause offence. The views expressed by speakers at LSE events do not reflect the position or views of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
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