Academic scholarship & research with commercial relevance - Social Futures Observatory

This project is a broad look at what social developments will be emerging over the next 10 years. 10 academics at Lancaster (in varying fields) will be asked to contact 10 academics outside Lancaster who will also then be asked to contact 10 further academics. This will allow us to collect views from 1000 academics. Each of those 1000 will be asked to submit an outline of what they think the key future developments in their research area will be over the next 10 years. The results will be publicised in early April.

Please contact for further details.

This project explores young people's visions of the future - both 'the future' in global terms but also their own future. The project will include but move beyond their personal ambitions towards a deeper understanding of their perceptions of the future of wider society, culture, politics, technology and the environment.

This study endeavours to take a standpoint where young people are recognised in terms of increased agency, freedom and choice. For this reason a key part of the project will be to involve several young informers who will aid in the research design and production of research questions.

See Proposal - [39k]

This project is now fully subscribed

See The Social Laboratory Programme

This research explores customer relationships at a more fundamental level than is normally the case in much commercial research. We believe that by failing to explore at this level mass service organisations are increasingly unable to respond to the shift towards a values based society.

See research proposal - [37k]
Presented in December 2007

Proposal to be posted shortly.