Utopian Stories

Utopian Stories is a large citizen science project in which school classes are invited to collaborate with researchers from literary studies and climate research to study the changes we are preparing to make for a sustainable future.

 

Aim

2020 was an unusual year for many of us. In order to protect one another from the coronavirus, we’ve refrained from doing many of the things we’re used to doing. But even greater changes are needed to put the breaks on climate change. We need to stop what we’re doing and ask ourselves what kind of future we want to have, but at the same time we need to move forward as quickly as possible with the process of adapting to a changing climate.

Utopian Stories links together the behavioural changes we made during the pandemic with climate change adaptation and our visions for the future. Students become co-researchers who collaborate with climate scientists, literary scholars, future researchers and educators. Teachers will gain valuable input for their classes, focusing on the scientific method, working with literature, and the global sustainability goals – all while providing researchers with important data collected by their students.

Utopian Stories is rooted in the pandemic and the climate crisis, but it takes aim at a brighter future – maybe even utopia! Does this sound interesting? Read more and register yourself and your classes here!

How to participate

Read more at 

The project is well suited for students 16-19 years with teacher supervision.

Contact persons: 
Literature researcher Camilla Brudin Borg from the University of Gothenburg will analyze the many collected future stories and summarize the material's various possible future worlds.
camilla.brudin.borg@lir.gu.se

Professor Alasdair Skelton from the Bolin Center for Climate Research at Stockholm University will estimate and visualize how different choices and changes in everyday life will have various climate footprint outcomes. This will be both the changes we made during the pandemic but also those that are illustrated in the possible futures  of the utopian stories.
alasdair.skelton@geo.su.se

Needed equipment

Materials for teachers in Swedish
Nobel Prize Museum | Aktiviteter och filmer för lärare 

Link to survey 1 (Swedish): Nobel Prize Museum | Uppdrag 1: Vad gjorde du inte 2020?

Link to survey 2 (Swedish): Nobel Prize Museum | Uppdrag 2: Dela din framtid

Completed from 01/04/2021 until 01/09/2023

Keywords

Science Topics

Difficulty Level

Participation tasks

Coordinator

Other Organisations involved

Location