Program

Day 1 - Thursday, 3 September 2026

08:00 – 09:00  : Registration Open, Location: Sasin Hall (Plenary Room), 9th Floor, Sasin School of Management 

09:00 – 09:20  : Opening Session of APFN 12

Welcome and Opening Remarks

Jost Wagner, APFN Chief Navigator

Dr. Ian Fenwick, Director of the Sasin School of Management 

09:30 – 10:20: Asia Pacific Futures - Advancing People, Planet, Prosperity, and Peace - A discussion between world-famous futurists Prof. Richard Hames and Prof. Sohail Inayatullah

Moderator: Angelia Teo, Futurist and Founder Futura, Singapore

10:20 - 10:30 : Introduction into the Programme and Special Features of the Conference

11:00 – 12:30 : Parallel Workshops

Session A1: Reimagining Learning Through Futures Literacy: Practices and Pathways for Futures-Ready Education Panel Description: 

As education faces rapid social, technological, and global transformation, futures literacy offers new ways of preparing students and youth to navigate uncertainty, imagine alternative futures, and shape preferred futures. This panel brings together perspectives from Northwestern University, Tamkang University, and Teach the Future to share innovative practices, pedagogies, and pathways for cultivating futures-ready learners through futures thinking and anticipatory education. 

Moderators/Resource Persons: Dr. Jezreel Larry Rivera Caunca & Dr. Shermon Cruz

Session A2: Innovation and New Approaches in Futures Research 

Presentation 1: Decolonizing Dreams – examining whose imaginations shape our futures and why decolonizing futures practice matters. Trishia Nashtaran. Bangladesh, Founder, Third Space Future

Presentation 2: Title to be added, Trish Lavery, Director, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Australia  

Presentation 3: Algorithmic Inheritance: Reimagining the Future of Women's Economic Empowerment in Asia-Pacific, Azucena Carrasco, Journalist | The Wire | 4EB Radio & Researcher, Geneva Institute of International Relations, Australia

Presentation 4: The Macrohistory Perspective on the Holarchic Evolutionary model". Marta Botta, Futurist and Researcher, Australia 

Moderator: Dr. Shakil Ahmed, Founder, Ridiculous Futures

Session A3: Evaluating Futures Work: A Core Skill for Professional Foresight Practice

Workshop Description:

Foresight and futures thinking are increasingly used by governments, donors, philanthropies, aid agencies, civil society organisations, and businesses to navigate uncertainty, imagine alternatives, build anticipatory capacity, and inform strategy. But how do we know whether futures work is making a difference? This interactive workshop introduces evaluation as an essential professional skill for futurists and foresight practitioners and a practical way to strengthen credibility, improve practice, support learning, and demonstrate value to funders, clients, communities, and decision-makers. Building on the work of the APF’s Foresight Evaluation Initiative, participants will explore why foresight is difficult to evaluate, including long time horizons, intangible outcomes, complex systems change, co-production with stakeholders, and the challenge of moving beyond simplistic measures of “impact.” Through guided reflection and applied group work, participants will learn how to frame evaluation questions, identify meaningful outcomes, assess changes in futures literacy and foresight capacity, and design proportionate evaluation approaches for workshops, scenarios, scanning processes, and strategic foresight projects, The session will be especially useful for practitioners who want to make their futures work more fundable, more rigorous, more useful, and more trusted. Participants will leave with a practical starting framework for embedding evaluation into foresight design from the beginning.

Facilitator/Resource Person:

Dr. Steven Lichty, APF Board Member, Lead of the APF Foresight Evaluation Initiative, and Managing Partner of REAL Consulting Group

Session A4: Navigating Turbulent Times: Foresight for Resilient Food Systems

Join us to push out our collective sense of what's possible for the future of food. In these postnormal times, what ruptures and uncertainties loom both in and beyond the food system? Consider the stakes: by 2050, the world must nourish nearly 10 billion people while global food demand climbs by half — yet today almost 3 billion people still cannot afford a healthy diet. Climate volatility threatens to erode staple crop yields just as demand peaks, compressing decades of hard-won food security gains into a single decade of disruption. The futures arriving are not the ones our food systems were built for — and the window to reimagine them is narrowing fast. We will workshop these themes kinetically to co-ideate ways forward for food security, no matter what the futures bring.

Facilitators: Dr. Rathana Peou Norbert- Munns, Senior Agrifood System Policy and Climate Foresight Planning Specialist Asia-Pacific Regional Focal Point, UN Food Systems Coordination Hub & Mr. Luke Tay, Founder, Cornucopia FutureScapes and Asia Rep, APF

12:30 – 13:30 : Networking Lunch 

13:30 – 15:00 : (90 minutes) 

Session B1: Pacific Futures 

What could the Asia-Pacific Futures Network become by 2036 if it was guided by Pacific values, Pacific relationships and Pacific responsibilities to future generations? This participatory session invites participants into a Pacific-hosted futures space where story, listening, ocean stewardship, reciprocity and collective care shape the way futures are imagined. Drawing on practical examples from Pacific foresight, planning, peace and security, youth voice and creative practice, the session explores how Pacific actors are not only using futures tools, but reshaping them through Pacific ways of knowing and being. Participants will work in small circles to co-create a woven set of values, practices, relationships and commitments for APFN’s next decade. The session offers a grounded and generous experience of Pacific Futures Governance, showing how APFN can amplify futures practice that is relational, accountable and transformative across the Asia-Pacific region. 

Session B2: Advancements in Futures Research and Policy {Room 503}

Presentation 1: Running experiments set in the future: How Agentic AI is informing Foresight with data, Angelia Teo (Ms.), Founder Futura, Singapore

Presentation 2: Redesign Thinking for Wicked Futures:  Transforming Conditions rather than Solving Problems , Dr. Dominic Raymond Chew, DBA, Singapore

Presentation 3: Title to be added, Dayle Stanley (Ms.), Head of Futures and Foresight (Australia), Rand Corporation

Presentation 4: Cutting the Taiwan-China Gordian Knot: Alternative Post-Westphalian Futures

for Peaceful Reunification, Mr. Eliesh SD, Future Human Habitat Futurologist, Université Côte d'Azur &  Mr Joshua Goh, PhD Student, Singapore Management University

Moderator: Prof. Jawn Lim

Session B3: Corporate Foresight - Stories from the Field and Outlook into the Future

This session wijl share some of corporate foresight work in Asia such as Futures Tales (TBC) or Arup’s work on regenerative design alongside Our World in 2046, a firm‑wide foresight programme that invites collective imagination about the futures we are designing towards. We explore how worldbuilding and shared narratives can help reframe the role of designers and organisations in shaping regenerative, life‑centred futures. We will also explore how governments and Executive business schools prepare for the future of their corporate ecosystems.  

Panelists and Resource Persons

Dr. Karndee Leopairote, Founder Futures Tales and Deputy Party Leader, Democrat Party, Thailand (TBC)

Diana Pang, APAC Foresight Manager, Arup, Singapore 

Sean Pillot de Chenceney, Futurist, Author and Curator Podcast "The New Abnormal", United Kingdom 

Dr. Chaiyatorn (TBC), National Innovation Agency of Thailand

Moderator: Ragil Ratnam, Business Development Manager, Sasin School of Management (TBC)

Session B4: Academic Session: Exploring Futures-Focused Research in the Asia-Pacific Region

This session will feature academics from the Asia-Pacific region, whose work is focused on Futures-related research 

Speaker 1: Ray Daniel Peralta. "Exploring Philippine Futures Through Inter-generational Lenses: Four Alternative Scenarios of the AmBisyon Natin 2040 Vision"

Speaker 2: Chun-Ta Chiu. "Curating Public Futures: Local Knowledge, Cultural Sustainability, and Anticipatory Governance-- a Case of the Futures City Museum Project"

Speaker 3: Shakil Ahmed.  "From Inspiration to Collective Agency: What Makes Futures Work Stick?"

Speaker 4: Title to be added, Prof. Fu Zhiyong from Tsinghua University, 

Moderator: Trish Lavery, Director, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Australia

Session B5: Voicing the Future: Cultivating Foresight through Vocal Coherence and Embodied 

As futures practitioners, we are trained to scan signals, analyze trends, and imagine alternative futures. Yet the quality of our foresight is shaped by the state from which we perceive. When we are overwhelmed, reactive, or disconnected from ourselves, we often project the past into the future. This experiential session introduces Vocal Coherence, an approach integrating voice, somatic awareness, and reflective practice to cultivate presence, coherence, and deeper listening. Through guided vocal practices and futures-oriented reflection, participants will explore how voice can become a pathway for sensing emerging possibilities, accessing imagination, and strengthening their capacity to engage uncertainty with curiosity rather than fear. Together we will explore a simple but powerful question: What becomes possible when we learn not only to think about the future, but to listen for it? 

Facilitator/Resource Person: Mr. Ittinat Seeboonruang

15:00 – 15:30 : Networking Coffee Break

15:30– 17:00 : Parallel Workshops 

C1: The Future of Shared Agency: Humans and AI in Collaboration

As AI shifts from tool to collaborator, leaders are being invited into a profound change journey. A journey that begins with acknowledging how power, autonomy, and decision-making are already being reshaped in their organizations. This interactive workshop explores the emerging landscape of shared and contested agency in hybrid human–AI environments, and what this means across multiple possible futures of leadership. Through near future scenarios and agency mapping activities, participants will surface hidden assumptions and consider the release of outdated beliefs about control, capability, and decision rights. Together, we will examine the tensions and opportunities that arise when humans and intelligent systems co-govern work, policy, and community outcomes in different future contexts. The session introduces “agency literacy” (Farrow, 2026) a fresh capability for navigating AI-enabled futures and offers practical tools for designing ethical, inclusive, and future-ready teams. Participants will leave with insights and practices that support them to transform how they lead and follow in a world where agency is increasingly distributed, negotiated, and intentionally shaped.

Resource Person: Dr. Elissa Farrow, Australia 

C2: Decolonising Futures with Appreciative Inquiry 

Can we reshape the future of foresight in just 60 minutes? Let’s find out. In this fast-paced, highly interactive workshop led by Patricia Lustig and supported by Adam Sharpe, you won't just learn about a powerful framework — you will actively live it. We are tackling a vital, urgent question: How do we decolonize foresight? To find the answers, Patricia and Adam will guide us through Appreciative Inquiry, a transformative approach to change that focuses on strengths, possibilities, and shared success rather than just fixing problems.

Moderators: Patricia Lustig, CEO & Managing Director of LASA Insight & Adam Sharpe, Futurely, Australia 

C3: Frontier Laboratory for Cosmolocal Futures: “Chiang Mai 2045”

Cosmolocalism is a vision (notably constellated in The Cosmo-local Reader by Ramos, Bauwens et al.) that bridges planetary globalization with healthy localism. ⁠We see many emerging signals / patterns / seed forms of this today, good and bad: digital nomads, special zones, pop-up cities, regenerative villages, distributed organisations, etc. Not far from where we are in Bangkok, is a key node (and a fresh frontier lab) for all this in the form of Chiang Mai, and especially Chiang Mai in Sep. 2026 (where there are a few month-long labs and residencies alongside the launch of Thailand’s first Nomad-Friendly District). We will use “Chiang Mai 2045” as the focus case for this session. This session will both describe the Lab but also embody / stage the Lab (where we will explore, through a bite-sized workshop, some of the core questions and design trade-offs involved in a ground-up design challenge for a cosmolocal constellation).

Facilitators/Resource Persons: Prof Daniel Schlagwein, Editor-in-Chief | Journal of Information Technology (JIT) & President | AIS SIG Grounded Theory Methodology (SIG GTM) & Professor at Sasin School of Management, Chulalongkorn University & Sam Chua Cultural Entrepreneur, Founding Curator, Seapunk Studios and Human Systems Designer & Futurist

Session C4: Spirituality and Futures Thinking - An open dialogue

In this session we invite people who want to have an open conversation on the connection between spirituality and Futures Thinking. 

'Resource Persons / Moderators: Dr. Sohail Inayatullah, Dr. Tamás Gaspar, Didi A. Devapriya

Workshop C5: Future Archetypes of Tax Service Delivery - A Design Futures Case Study from Inland Revenue Authority Singapore (working title)

This session presents an innovative integration of Futures Thinking and Design Thinking through Future Archetypes. Drawn from tax administration, the case study shows how the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS) applied Design Thinking's user engagement techniques to Future Archetypes – identifying and interviewing present-day proxies who embodied each archetype's core mindset. The session shares the case study, key takeaways, and hands-on activities for practitioners to apply it to their own Future Archetypes before committing to a strategic direction.

Facilitator/Resource Person:

Sheryl TEY, Senior Manager (Behavioural Insights & Design), Taxpayer eXperience Division, Taxpayer eXperience and Strategy Branch, Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore

17:00 – 17:15 : Reflections on Day 1 and Outlook for Day 2

17:15 - 17:45 Award Ceremony for the APFN Awards 2026 

Special Address: TBD