Global Futures, Colonial Pasts (GFCP)

This research cluster engages with the most pressing challenges of the future and examines how these are rooted in the power relations and colonial structures of the past. From environmental challenges, changing global power relations, questions of social justice, to the techno-politics of the future, how can we make sense of these unfolding dynamics and the way they are understood and represented? What role do the legacies of colonialism play in shaping contemporary world order and what space is there for historically-excluded voices? How are ideas about the future be affected by existing power relations, and acts of resistance and resignification? In engaging with these questions, the research cluster examines how future visions are grounded in the deep structures of the past and how they become mobilised in the service of political, environmental, and economic goals.  

This relation between the past and the future will be explored from three different angles: theorising the relationship between past and the future; historicising the future; and futurising the past. This Cluster welcomes all scholars whose research speaks to global issues, and who are interested in exploring their historical and/or theoretical dimension, particularly as they intersect with (post-colonial) histories of violence, dispossession, or marginalization.