ABOUT
Imagining Tomorrow is a British Academy project that examines the legacies of forecasting and prediction in politics, urban planning, environmental science, literature, art, and culture.
Funded by the British Academy projects ‘Getting it Wrong: The Limits to Prediction’ (2023-2026), and ‘The Art and Artifice of Prediction’ (2020), we explore the different forms of scientific and cultural forecasting that emerged in the twentieth century. We ask how these predictive technologies, methods, and theories have fared against reality, and how their legacies echo in the present.
Our project has included a podcast series ‘The Art and Artifice of Prediction’, academic conferences at the University of Cambridge and the University of Bologna, and the exhibition ‘Imagining Tomorrow: The Artefacts of Prediction’, on show at the Manchester Museum from December 2025 to June 2026. A special issue of the journal Global Intellectual History will showcase the research presented at our conferences on forecasting in environmental thought.
You can explore our podcasts, workshops, exhibition, and publications using the links on this site.
TEAM MEMBERS
OR ROSENBOIM
Associate Professor in Contemporary History
University of Bologna
Historian of twentieth century international political thought in Europe and the United States.
MARIA CHRISTOU
Senior Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature
University of Manchester
Scholar of modern and contemporary literature interested in questions of subjectivity, agency, and action in relation to the future.
DR LISE BUTLER
Senior Lecturer in Modern History
City St George’s, University of London
Historian of modern Britain, interested in the relationship between social science and left-wing politics.
RUTH MORGAN
Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Environmental History
Australian National University
Environmental historian and historian of science with a particular focus in Australia.
Renée Melton Klein
Independent Curator
Independent curator who brings historical objects to life through imaginative, story-driven interpretation. Renée is especially interested in how art and everyday artefacts carry the ideas, emotions, and experiences of the people who created and used them.
CoNSTANCE evans
Curatorial Assistant
Manchester Museum
Final year student of curation at Central Saint Martins. Her interests and expertise focus on critical thinking towards an anti-capitalist, eco-feminist, and post-colonialist view, combined with her artistic practice, which includes fine art, illustration, animation, and graphic design.
CONTACT
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FUNDERS & SUPPORTERS
