Events
Mutant Futures and the Possibilities Ahead
DATE CHANGE - Due to Circumstances Beyond our Control, this Event has been rescheduled to Wednesday, June 8, 2022 - 3:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. If you've already registered - the same links will apply!
The “Mutant Futures” framework is intended to support change makers, professionals and innovators in stepping up their creative impact in the world, their communities, organizations and in their lives.
We live in Epic Times, with great challenges and transitions. Our capacity to align our sense of purpose to these societal changes is critical. We can find meaningful roles to play in these times, and from this foundation we can forge new methods that can address our challenges and create change in new, more powerful ways.
Each of us holds a gift for the world, even if we don't know what that is. Each of us is important, holding the potential to address our social challenges, run experiments and find solutions. There are myriad challenges, but as well millions upon millions of people who are and can find creative solutions to these challenges. What challenge is the future asking you to participate in?
In this session, Dr. Ramos will share the story and evolution of the Mutant Futures framework and invite all in attendance to explore their own possible contributions to a future of humanity that is generative and restorative. We will have ample time in the session for dialogue with the audience. ALL ARE WELCOME - NOT LIMITED TO PSU FUTURES COLLABORATORY MEMBERS!!!
About our Guest Speaker: Jose Ramos is a social innovator, researcher, advocate for the commons and a mutant futurist. He has 20 years experience as a futures thinker / advocate, writer and organizer. He has a great passion for exploring who we are as planetary beings, which includes ethnographic study of alternative globalizations, writings on planetary stigmergy / collaboration, and research on cosmo-localization. This line of work connects him to the truth that we are all relatives on a planet that we mutually depend on for our survival and wellbeing – our shared commons. He is originally from California of Mexican ancestry. Born in Oakland, he grew up in a very multi-cultural suburb of Los Angeles. After living in Japan and Taiwan, where he studied Japanese and Mandarin, he moved to Melbourne Australia to be with his wife, De Chantal. They have two children, son Ethan and daughter Rafaela. CV
Event is free but you need to register AT THIS LINK!
Past Events
The Future is Here: Reflections from the PSU Futures Collaboratory
A webinar series that explores what the “new normal” of university life in a COVID-19 world might look like for PSU
On March 17, 2020, the operations of the Portland State campus changed overnight, with faculty forced to teach their classes remotely and all but essential faculty, staff and students sent to do their teaching, learning, research and support work from home. As the ever-changing “new normal” of a COVID-19 impacted world continues to evolve, big questions remain about how higher education — and PSU specifically — will thrive, not just survive. What before might have been considered “future” directions for the university have become ways we’re navigating the present together.
Join the Portland State University Futures Collaboratory for a glimpse of what this “new normal” might look like. This cross-campus and cross-discipline collaboratory of PSU faculty, staff and student fellows convened in the fall of 2019 to provide recommendations to President Steve Percy this spring about ways PSU could become more “future facing.” The timing of our work, in retrospect, couldn’t be better, as we now have some frameworks and ideas about PSU’s future to share with President Percy and our broader PSU community.
These webinars explore perspectives on how PSU can embrace and strengthen its “present” future.
A Crash Course in Futures
Get a brief introduction to futures thinking and foresight practice from PSU Presidential Futures Fellow and School of Social Work Professor Laura Nissen. And hear from three PSU Futures Collaboratory fellows about their experiences learning, sharing and collaborating with peers across the PSU campus this past year.
Panelists include:
Jeanne Enders, assistant professor, The School of Business
Cynthia Gomez, executive director, Cultural Resource Centers
Yves Labissiere, associate professor, OHSU-PSU School of Public Health
Recorded Friday, May 29, 2020.
Looking Ahead to PSU’s Future, Now
How will Portland State thrive, not just survive, the COVID-19 pandemic? The PSU Futures Collaboratory sees the future as plural. One of the approaches foresight and futures practitioners take is to create multiple scenarios, components of which end up being combined in how history actually plays out. In this session hosted by PSU Presidential Futures Fellow and School of Social Work Professor Laura Nissen, three PSU Collaboratory fellows offer a variety of scenarios for PSU’s future and ways in which all members of the PSU community may take this important work forward.
Panelists include:
Todd Rosenstiel, associate dean of research and graduate programs, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
Andres Guzman, coordinator for equity, diversity, and inclusion, College of Education
Angela Jackson, executive director, entrepreneurial and industry engagement
Sheila Mullooly, learning center manager, Intensive English Language Program
Recorded Friday, June 5, 2020.
Race to the Future? Reimagining the Default Settings of Technology & Society
From everyday apps to complex algorithms, technology has the potential to hide, speed, and deepen discrimination, while appearing neutral and even benevolent when compared to racist practices of a previous era. In this webinar, guest speaker Ruha Benjamin, associate professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, explores how discriminatory technology designs encode inequity, considers how race itself is a kind of tool designed to stratify and sanctify social injustice, and how technology is and can be used toward liberatory ends. This session is co-sponsored by the Office of Global Diversity and Inclusion.
Friday, June 12, 2020