2016 Oxford Education Society Annual Lecture

‘What are universities for?’

Keri Facer is Professor of Educational and Social Futures at the University of Bristol, UK.

Her work is concerned with understanding the future role of universities and schools in the context of environmental, economic and technological disruptions. Since 2012 she has been Leadership Fellow for the UK Research Council’s ‘Connected Communities’ Programme, a unique £30m + experiment in bringing together academics and civil society groups to share expertise and knowledge in areas ranging from health and wellbeing to sustainability and cultural heritage. This programme comprises over 300 projects across the UK and is a global flagship for critical and reflexive collaborative research activity.

Prior to this, she was Research Director at Futurelab, and led the Beyond Current Horizons project for the Department for Children, Schools and Families. In recent years, her focus has shifted away from technologies toward a particular concern with the ways we imagine the future, and the alternative futures that might be envisaged and used as a resource for creativity and social change. In this area she has been working with UNESCO amongst others, to encourage the exploration of the role of universities as a social resource for anticipatory practices in conditions of uncertainty. Her recent books include Learning Futures(2011) and Towards a Critical Politics of Education and Technology(2013).