Professor Keri Facer

I'm Professor of Educational and Social Futures at the University of Bristol. My work focuses on cultivating what I call the ‘temporal imagination’ – the capacity to work critically with ideas of time, rhythm, pasts and futures to open up possibilities for positive personal and social change in conditions of technological and ecological crisis.

I work in a range of different settings - from schools and universities, to social movements and policy settings -  and across a number of disciplines, collaborating with engineers, artists, sociologists, philosophers. I locate my work at the intersection of Education, Cultural Studies and Futures Studies. 

My research at the moment is organised around a number of projects. I am programme lead for the British Academy ‘Times of a Just Transition’ Global Convening programme which brings together 20 participants from around the world to surface the way that time works as a form of invisible power in negotiations around sustainability transitions. I am Co-Investigator on the ESRC Sociodigital Futures Centre where, along with colleagues Arathi Sriprakash, Ben Williamson and Jessica Pykett we are exploring the role of VR in educating the imagination and examining how to surface alternative futures for education in the world of AI, robotics and networks. I am working in partnership with Woven Earth in Derbyshire to explore what it might mean to reconnect humans and land in a 150 acre regenerative farm.

I have worked with a wide range of NGO and political partners. Most recently, I've been working with the Joseph Rowntree Fund, in support of their Imagination Infrastructure and Emerging Futures Programme.  For two years, I was a member of the writing team for the UNESCO Futures of Education Commission.

I've held a number of visiting professorships and research fellowships that have been important in shaping my research. From 2021-2023 I was visiting Professor at Gothenburg University - working on the intersection between sustainability and storytelling, and pedagogies of affect and emotion. I was Zennström Professor in Climate Change Leadership at Uppsala University from 2018-2020. From 2012-2018 I led the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council Connected Communities Programme, a £40m programme of university-community collaboration.

My educational futures work has seen me partner with organisations from the BBC, the UK’s Department for Education and Electronic Arts to local city farms, ecovillages and community organisations.

My books include ‘Learning Futures: Education, Technology and Social Change’ and ‘Working with Time in Qualitative Research’. I am joint Editor-in-Chief of the Journal Futures and edit the Routledge Book Series on Futures and Anticipation with Prof Johan Siebers.

You can find more publications, including early versions of upcoming work, archived talks and emerging ideas on my personal website: https://kerifacer.wordpress.com/

Current and recent PhD students have focused on topics such as: learning in ecovillages; facilitating dialogue around racial justice in land rights movements; the role of the body in social transitions practices; how school children imagine the future; the experiences of autistic children in natural environments; the rise of big data in schools; students confronting difference in post-soviet states.

I particularly welcome applications for PhD studentships in the following areas:

• Education and Climate Change/ Challenges of the Anthropocene
• Time and Education
• University futures - in particular the 'civic university' and changing university-public relationships to address change
• Informal learning and learning cities in relation to social transformation
• Education and Sustainable Development/Sustainable Futures
• Critical studies in Educational Technology