[AISWorld] Second CfP: New Forms of Inquiry: Futuring, Design and Imagination. HICSS 58 2025

[Dirk Hovorka]

Futures-oriented researchers,



Please consider submitting your work to the New Forms of Inquiry: Futuring, Design and Imagination minitrack for HICSS 58!


This minitrack invites submissions which explore future and possible worlds rather than provide analysis of what is or has been. We are looking for contributions that break with well-trodden empirical and conceptual conventions to help academic and practice build novel concepts, instruments and designs by focusing on digital future(s).

This objective is anchored in the Information Systems discipline’s increasing interest in the processes and implications of global, societal, economic, and individual digitalization which will have enormous impact in future(s) which have not been well considered. We particularly think of this challenge as one where analyses and extrapolation from the present fails to provide meaningful insights beyond projecting the status quo into the future, albeit in a more technicized version of itself. Rather, we seek ways for science to become more insightful, informative, and instructive to active shapers of digital life worlds– or even to become an active shaper itself.


We hope to see exciting submissions that approach the challenge by addressing one of three themes: conceptual, methodological, or creative. (1) Conceptual contributions will advance the role and development of forward-looking concepts, relationships and theory that may become the ground for the processes of theory envisioning, theory formulation, theory replacement. (2) Methodological contributions will contribute to a collective effort to build methods for engaging with futures and possible worlds. Current future-studies approaches (e.g., scenarios; technology foresight) could be extended by presenting speculative or creative processes to address questions regarding specific methodological setups of studies engaging with post-digital futures or ways of engaging those with a stake in the future. (3) Creative contributions can engage with the traditions of speculative, discursive, anthropologic and ethnographic design approaches; making use of the creative methods of design to think about, critique, and re-imagine the technocultural world in which we live – and the one we may desire to pursue.


We continue our minitrack’s mission to challenge scholars to focus attention on “new phenomena, disclose new perspectives on phenomena, and illuminate new research agendas and programs” against the background of, and pushing past existing methods and establish theories. Topics include but are not limited to:


  *   Philosophical approaches to ‘futures’
  *   Designed artifacts that invite discussion about possible futures.
  *   Designed artifacts that address a potential future problem.
  *   New and existing methodologies to inquire within or about futures.
  *   Speculative and imaginative future scenarios
  *   Utopian and dystopian futures.
  *   Science fiction as a design or research strategy.
  *   Distinguishing possible, probable, and preferred futures.
  *   Large-scale system models that provide insights into futures
  *   Research connecting past <-> present <-> future
  *   Digital Geographies; Artifacts from the Future; Thought Experiments
  *   Techniques to engage those with a stake in futures
  *   Additional ideas welcome


Prospective authors are advised that the track does not look for topical contributions which are best submitted to one of the conference’s other (mini)tracks. Papers in this minitrack must explicitly provide the basis for more speculative future-leaning conceptualizations of phenomena, desgning or provide insight on how to provide such concepts.



Submissions due date: June 15

For more information see https://hicss.hawaii.edu/


Minitrack Co-Chairs:



Dirk Hovorka (Primary Contact)
University of Sydney
dirk.hovorka at sydney.edu.au<mailto:dirk.hovorka at sydney.edu.au>



Katja Thoring
Technical University of Munich
katja.thoring at tum.de<mailto:katja.thoring at tum.de>



Benjamin Mueller

University of Bremen

muellerb at uni-bremen.de<mailto:muellerb at uni-bremen.de>


-----------------------------------

Dirk S. Hovorka

Professor of Systems and Design

University of Sydney

NSW, 2006 AU

T +61 2 9351 2949

Senior Editor/Research Perspectives

Journal of the Association of Information Systems (JAIS)

2018 BGS Professor of the Year

http://sydney.edu.au/business/staff/dirkho<https://webmail.sydney.edu.au/owa/redir.aspx?C=ih8ggEa0AvdCkhgiAZ4-qvl2q3lNSZ3RGfXpphUpWUR02iAlS8DTCA..&URL=http%3a%2f%2fsydney.edu.au%2fbusiness%2fstaff%2fdirkho>