Explore
Horizon scanning
Notice emerging changes and signals relevant to a question, sector or community.
Field introduction · Learning and practice
Futures Studies and Foresight in Pakistan
An introduction to Futures Studies and Foresight, horizon scanning, scenarios and Futures Literacy through Pakistani research, education and community practice.
What are Futures Studies and Foresight?
Futures Studies is an interdisciplinary field concerned with how people understand, explore and imagine multiple possible futures. Foresight involves structured approaches for examining changes, assumptions and uncertainties to support decisions in the present. These approaches do not claim to predict a single predetermined future.
Question
Assumptions
Ask whose expectations guide the discussion and what evidence might challenge them.
Imagine
Alternative scenarios
Consider contrasting possibilities, including futures that conventional plans overlook.
Act
Backcasting
Start with a preferred future and identify plausible steps, constraints and collaborators in the present.
Teaching futures from Pakistan
Dr. Khatani's work combines Futures Studies and Foresight with Futures Literacy, higher education, responsible AI and local community engagement. His public research includes a Futures Literacy Lab for climate-related futures and scholarly work on intuition and imagination in scenario planning.
Indigenous stories and South Asian cultural memory can provide starting points for reflection, while historical evidence and imaginative adaptation should remain distinct. The site's fictional parrot guide and adaptation of Sheikh Chilli are educational storytelling devices, not reconstructions of ancient beliefs.
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