Introduction to Creating Feminist Futures: Research Methodologies for New Times

What role do and might feminist methodologies, with their prioritisation of ethical and political questions and interventions, have in creating futures? What kinds of futures are needed? What kinds of feminist imaginations should be cultivated, and how? What world-making practices might feminism (further) develop and/or invent? In the context of war, climate breakdown, pandemics, the resurgence of far-right politics, political upheaval and poverty, this special issue examines the role of feminist methods in creating futures that are desirable and necessary. This introduction to the special issue argues that feminism is especially well-equipped to examine and build new futures and that imagining and making different worlds can be helpfully understood as methods. We sketch out four key themes that we see as significant within the wide, varied and growing literatures on feminist futures and that are particularly important for the contributions gathered together here: non-linearity; interruption and refusal; world-making and speculation; collaboration.