Where are we looking at futures from today?
Critical futures studies asks how images of the future come about: from which assumptions, world views and myths, in whose interest. If you know the foundation, you can shift it and find alternatives beyond seemingly probable futures. Jonas Drechsel co-initiated the German-speaking community: network events since 2023, a podcast, a lecture series at HS Niederrhein.
Disrupts frames of thinking, opens doors
to alternative futures.
As of October 2026
The community brings international debates more strongly into the German-speaking world and updates Robert Jungk's critical perspective with what futures research around the world produces today. It connects related disciplines and collects approaches that have long worked critically without using the name. That way research, practice and teaching work on theory together.
Organisations that want to question the assumptions of their sector book the introductory workshop, universities the lecture series. And anyone who wants to think along becomes a member, contributes input or offers workshops of their own.
The community had existed for three years when it met in person for the first time, in July 2026 at the institut für zukünfte in Wolfsburg.
With Johannes Kleske, in German. 20 episodes since May 2023, from Richard Slaughter to the Missionswerkstatt.
Critical futures studies connects to schools of thought such as critical theory, systems theory, speculative design, experiential futures, narrative foresight, real utopias and utopia as method. Then there is the line of Robert Jungk, a German-language political and emancipatory tradition the community claims for itself. Jonas Drechsel trained as a future workshop facilitator with Hans Holzinger in 2021.
Infographic in German: Larissa Lachmann, larissalachmann.de
Since 2024 Jonas Drechsel has taught at HS Niederrhein: the lecture series Design-Kritik-Zukunft in the bachelor's programme (four runs, the fifth starts in autumn 2026) and the foundations of futures studies in the design master's. The lecture series understands design so broadly that it becomes relevant to everyone, makes critique tangible as something valuable and asks how the future can be shaped beyond extending the present. He has given guest lectures in the foresight master's in Ingolstadt and in transformation studies in Flensburg. For a new research department at Amazon he gave an interview.
Every image of the future is a piece of the present. The workshop uncovers what it is built from. Alternatives emerge from a shifted starting point.
Two hours, four movements, with Causal Layered Analysis and the Kritik-Kreisel. Facilitated with Dorle Schmidt.
In two hours, in person or online, your organisation puts its images of the future on the table, digs for the foundation underneath and develops alternatives from a shifted starting point.
Request a workshop ↗info@kritische-zukunftsforschung.de
