Abstract
This paper explores the intersection of utopian imagination with higher education, addressing the opportunities and tensions between pragmatic, holistic and transversal utopias and their place within education theory and practice. In response to contemporary crises in higher education, we argue that we must reimagine educational futures by broadening the frameworks through which utopian educational institutions, systems and practices can be imagined and critiqued. Working with the multiplicity of educational utopias and emphasising the conflicting framings of pragmatic and holistic utopias, the paper uses the idea of transversal future-making and the ‘placeness’ of utopia to discuss how it might be mobilised in the design of educational futures. These theoretical approaches are illustrated and examined through two examples from future-making in education – Speculative Higher Education Futures and Playtopias.
Introduction
Futures are neither inevitable nor preordained; they emerge through contested, negotiated and often unpredictable processes. Contemporary societal challenges – ranging from climate change to technological shifts and intensifying political instability – have made these futures feel increasingly precarious. The unfolding climate crisis, marked by escalating environmental degradation and resource scarcity, is not a distant threat but an ongoing reality. While technological advancements bring new possibilities, they also exacerbate concerns about data capitalism, the erosion of privacy and the consolidation of power among an elite few. At the same time, rising wealth inequality, deepening sociopolitical divides, and persistent forms of marginalisation based on gender, ethnicity and sexuality shape the present in ways that constrain imaginaries of the future. In response, there is an urgent need to cultivate alternative ways of thinking about what futures might be possible and desirable, embracing not just pragmatic adaptation but also radical reimagination (Webb, 2016). Envisioning and shaping different, better futures requires imagination, individual and collective effort, critique and collaboration (Bayne, 2023; Levitas, 2013; Nørgård and Holflod, 2024). In our view, it also necessitates knowledge of forms of utopian thinking that support us in moving beyond a focus on what is immediately achievable, toward imagining ambitious, holistic and society-wide change (Levitas, 2013).
To this end, we advocate for reimagining the future of higher education by incorporating utopian scholarship into its core. In doing this, we draw on contemporary work which defines utopia not as a ‘blueprint’ for top-down change, but as what Levitas describes as a widely felt ‘desire for a better way of being’ (8). The history of utopia in scholarship and politics is diverse and contested, and, as Levitas points out, has lacked an agreed, organising concept able to support its use in contemporary work. In defining it as the ‘desire for a better way of being’, she opens up multiple ways of understanding and working with the idea of utopia as a process, a conversation. Such a shift is vital as a strategy for keeping the future ‘open’. It is also one that is sensitive to the complex political history of utopia, particularly its association with totalitarianism, which enabled Popper (1986) to describe it as dangerous, pernicious, self-defeating, and leading to violence (5). For contemporary scholars, the challenge is well-defined by Rüssen (2005), who asks: How can we understand utopia today? In order to avoid sacrificing its intellectual force without at the same time ignoring the bitter experiences of that which has been done in its name, we would have to redefine utopia in a way that distinguishes it from the utopia that played a role in the human catastrophes of the twentieth century. (278)
Utopia has always been an ambiguous term, a neologism created by Thomas More denoting both ‘nowhere’ (from Greek οὐ-τόττος – no place) and ‘a good place’ (εὖ-τόττος – happy place). It acknowledges that social dreaming is both necessary and dangerous. Embracing Levitas’s definition of it as shared, collective ‘desire for a better way of being’ enables us to work with a broad utopian perspective, shifting from the narrow, pragmatic reforms that have been its acceptable face in recent education scholarship, toward a re-imagining of education as a site for critical social dreaming and collective action. To this end, the paper examines the role of utopian imagination in higher education, focusing on the differences and tensions among pragmatic, holistic and transversal approaches. In doing so, we exemplify and discuss strategies and perspectives that engage education’s political, economic and ecological dimensions.
Utopia in education
Utopian thinking in educational research, development and practice offers an engaging way to imagine and pursue alternatives that challenge the status quo while striving for better futures. In education, there has historically been a tendency toward the ‘pragmatic utopias’ (e.g., Badley, 2014), which emphasise feasibility as scaffolding for, for example, systemic or institutional reform programmes. However, a more recent shift in literary, sociological and, to some extent, educational scholarship has embraced utopianism as a means of organising ‘forward dreaming’ (Bloch, 1986) – an integrative, holistic approach that re-imagines possible educational futures in terms of broad societal change and human and planetary flourishing (Levitas, 2013, 2017).
As Webb (2016) argues, until recently, utopia – both as a method and a practice within education – appeared to have been thoroughly domesticated. The radical possibilities once linked to utopian visions, capable of liberating the imagination and catalysing systemic change, have often manifested in education as pragmatic, incremental reforms. According to Webb, these grounded, pragmatic ‘real utopias’ are evident in initiatives such as local school councils, campaigns for new school buildings, or collaborative resource sharing among institutions. While seeming mundane, these efforts are attempts to bridge the visionary and the feasible, essentially reimagining education within the constraints of existing systems. However, more recent approaches to utopia within education focus on imaginative utopias employing alternative methods to ‘open up’ the future to more radical possibilities and broader societal change. As Bayne (2023) points out, this movement encompasses critical approaches such as speculative futures (Ross, 2022; Staley, 2019), speculative design methods (Dunne and Raby, 2013; Nørgård, 2022), and anticipatory frameworks (Amsler and Facer, 2017; Facer, 2016). It is further advanced by innovative perspectives in educational philosophy that explore the potential of alternative educational realities and futures (Barnett, 2018; Barnett et al., 2022; Peters and Freeman-Moir, 2006; Yosef-Hassidim and Baldacchino, 2021). These developments aim to challenge dominant norms and reimagine what education could and should be in an increasingly complex world. However, tensions persist between ‘real’ and pragmatic utopias and holistic and imaginative ones.
In this paper, we assert that we can build on the diversity of utopian scholarship in educational research and practice to develop integrated, contingent, critical and transversal ways of actualising alternative educational futures.
Toward holistic and transversal utopias
‘Pragmatic’ utopias in education offer visions of the future grounded in current practices and ‘real-world’ contexts that explore institutional change through goals which appear viable and plausible in the present (Wright, 2020: p. 94). They are often limited to specific institutions and contexts and, as a result, are primarily concerned with the feasibility of localised utopias. According to Webb (2016), these forms of education utopia are characterised by their immanence, being rooted in current processes and trends; their partiality, being focused on localised and micro exercises of the utopian imagination rather than political moves toward broader, holistic change; and their process-orientation, being concerned with current practices rather than radically re-imagined futures (Webb, 2016). They align with ‘everyday utopias’ (Cooper, 2014), valuing what Halpin, 2003a described as ‘thinking in favour of positive, unusual, but ultimately practicable visions for the reform of schools and teaching and learning generally’ (59). Webb cautions that such utopias risk domesticating the utopian imagination, limiting its ability to challenge and reimagine societal structures in profound ways. Offering transformative, transversal and critical reimagining as an alternative is crucial as a way of reminding ourselves that future education utopias depend on broader social change.
Speculative and utopian approaches open new pathways for transforming higher education institutions, leadership and pedagogy by resisting the performative, managerial logic of neoliberalism. Rather than accommodating market-driven accountability, such methods foreground collective imagination, hope and desire. For example, the Speculative Higher Education Futures project described in this article used fictional scenarios (‘the University of Ennui’, ‘the AI Academy’, etc.) to disrupt conventional ways of approaching strategy and planning. By extending forward-thinking into an undefined timeframe, beyond the standard 5-year corporate approach, university leaders using these scenarios are supported to envision radical alternatives. Such futures-in-progress invite participants into the ‘not-yet’ of higher education, cultivating openness and uncertainty.
Similarly, in Playtopias, the second case in the article, participants engage in playful co-creation to surface hope and re-imagine pedagogy. By handling materials, experimenting with scenarios, and engaging in social dreaming, learners and educators cultivate new desires and imagination, sparking a desire for something else – something qualitatively different. In the Playtopias workshops, this process directly draws on Braidotti’s (via Guattari 2015) idea of transversality: by cutting across traditional disciplinary and human-nonhuman boundaries, participants reframed possible futures in interconnected, ecological terms. At the institutional level, utopian methods invite a re-placing of universities from corporate spaces into living places-in-the-making of care and co-creation. Such micro-utopian designs counter market logic by emphasising reciprocity and purpose over productivity.
This approach is broadly in line with Bloch’s (1954/1995) emphasis on ‘concrete’ utopias – those which are not constrained by the limited possibilities of the immediate present but offer a pathway toward actual, material change. These are utopias which liberate the future possible from the grind of the present through the principle of ‘educated hope’ (docta spes). As Levitas (2004) puts it, ‘we all have to understand that if we do not demand the impossible, all we will get is more of the same’ (273).
These holistic, society-wide (Levitas 2015) utopias are imaginative, critical and future-oriented, aiming to fundamentally reimagine society for the long term rather than tinker with the elements that currently seem ‘fixable’ within a short timeframe and existing resources. By prioritising interconnectedness and transformative possibilities, this approach to educational utopianism inspires an integrated and holistic vision for education and society more broadly, prioritising interconnectedness, transversality and transformative possibilities.
In this context, Braidotti’s conceptualisation of transversality (2019a, 2021) becomes significant as an approach to imagining and shaping futures that extend across and beyond conventional boundaries and practices. A usefully simple definition of transversality is provided by Palmer and Panayotov (2016) as being: non-categorical and non-judgemental. It defies disciplinary categories and resists hierarchies. A transversal line cuts diagonally through previously separated parallel lines, as in the common garden gate. (no page)
We view transversality as supporting a shift from real utopias to holistic utopias through its embrace of a ‘neo-materialism’ that enables us to ‘deal with the challenges of our eco-sophical, post-anthropocentric, geo-bound, and techno-mediated’ contemporary world (Braidotti, 2019a: p. 1185). It supports us in imagining futures that reject binary oppositions and embrace plural, transdisciplinary, interconnected modes of knowing and being, challenging disciplinary segregation and conventional spatial, temporal, social and cultural boundaries (Braidotti, 2019b, 2021). Such futures prioritise the marginalised, the underrepresented, and the yet-to-be-realised, framing education as a site for post-disciplinary, posthumanist – and utopian – futures (Cole and Bradley, 2018).
From a design perspective, Hsu (2021) suggests that transversal approaches nurture conditions for radical creativity through encounters that glimpse wholeness, thereby approaching the pluriversal multiplicity of worlds (Escobar, 2017) as emergent crystallisations of bonds across boundaries. By situating humans within broader ecological, technological and planetary networks, transversal utopias emphasise strategies of interconnected thriving, where being and becoming extend beyond traditional boundaries to foster transformative, holistic change (Nørgård and Holflod, 2024). This renewed engagement with utopian thinking – through extending transversality towards utopian imagination – invites educators and scholars to envision education as an evolving, entangled and hopeful practice of collective world-building, one that supports the imagination of less performative, competitive and corporate futures. Recent discussions on utopia in education have argued the case for comprehensive and radical social change as an essential foundation for educational futures rooted in the principles of planetary and social justice (for instance, Amsler, 2019; Bayne, 2023; Elfert, 2015; Webb, 2016; Van Dermijnsbrugge and Chatelier, 2022). A foundational concept for this holistic, process-oriented utopia is the notion of the ‘education of desire’ suggested by Abensour (1999) as the essence and purpose of utopia itself: the point is not for utopia (unlike the tradition that calls for the ‘moral education of humanity’) to assign ‘true’ or ‘just’ goals to desire but rather to educate desire, to stimulate it, to awaken it – not to assign it a goal but to open a path for it … Desire must be taught to desire, to desire better, to desire more, and above all to desire otherwise. (pp. 145-6)
The philosophical concept of the education of desire (or indeed of Bloch’s ‘educated hope’) has gained little traction in educational research itself. In proposing this term, Abensour does not refer specifically to educational institutions and systems; rather, he emphasises the power of desire within holistic utopian thought to transform how society imagines its preferable futures. Desire, in this sense, ‘creates a space that enables us to imagine wanting something else, something qualitatively different’ (Levitas, 2013: p. 113). In this context, desire is not about loss or lack (as in the Lacanian sense). It is rather about a creative abundance which is transversal: ‘transversality positions desire as a positive force capable of subverting, but also re-structuring relations between entities in the world’ (Braidotti, 2019a: p. 10).
Utopia as the education of desire, or as the desire for a better way of being, is an idea with which many critical and progressive educators would identify. Abensour himself (writing on Thomas More), emphasises that the inhabitants of the island of Utopia possess ‘intellects sharpened by reading’ and are ‘engaged in the endless search for a just and good political order, demonstrated in their being in a state of permanent inventing and reinventing’ (Abensour, 2017) - they are educated subjects engaged in imagining, advocating for and materially building a better way of being.
From no-where to now-here: placeful utopias in higher education
The critical shifts from pragmatic to holistic and transversal utopias, those that span disciplines, structures and temporalities, underscore the necessity of reconsidering how the places of higher education are positioned and limited. This demands a re-placing of utopia from the idea of a conceptual ‘no-place’ or ‘nowhere’ to the eutopian good place, and a re-imagining of higher education futures via place-making practices that integrate or transform the physical, cultural and emotional dimensions of their spaces. Casey (1997) asserts that: ‘to be at all – to exist in any way – is to be somewhere and to be somewhere is to be in some kind of place’ (p. ix). From the philosophy of place emerges the idea of utopian ‘placefulness’ (Barnett et al., 2022; Nørgård and Bengtsen, 2016) – the inherent character and atmosphere of being a vibrant, spirited place. In higher education, placefulness transforms institutions into cultural spheres of value, imagination and meaning, where academic life and institutional existence coalesce (Temple, 2019, 2024). This transformation requires dwelling on the past, present, and future, a mode of being which Heidegger (2001) refers to as fostering care and relational engagement, in this case from both the university and its members: ‘To dwell is to let something take root, to care for and attend to the world in which we live’ (p. 147). As Norberg-Schulz (1980) emphasises, ‘to dwell means to belong to a given place and to identify oneself with it’ (p. 23).
Higher education institutions seeking to transform functional spaces into spirited places require recognition and nurturing through deliberate place-making practices. Heidegger’s (2001) concept of dwelling emphasises that it ‘is not merely an act of occupying space but a way of being that fosters relational engagement and belonging’ (p. 147). This, in turn, highlights the potential for connecting theories on utopia to those of place. To simultaneously strive for the materialisation of ‘placeful utopias’ in higher education capable of turning conceptual no-where utopias into experiential now-here utopias, and transforming managerial and competitive spaces into liveable and compassionate ones. In higher education, this involves creating places that move beyond the higher education ‘corporate spirit’ with its associated architectures and functionalities. Such place-making practices transform higher education from a merely built environment into a revitalised place by nurturing its cooperative and compassionate spirit and collective co-creative atmosphere. Lefebvre (1991) further emphasises that place is shaped by tangible lived experiences and practices, making it vital for higher education to transform physical and functional designs into enculturating eutopias based on the spirit of ideas and practices of utopian imagination. Through nurturing, devising, or enabling utopias to ‘take place’ by developing and practising utopian place-making, higher education can envision ‘places-in-the-making’ that evoke new futures for higher education and resonate with forward dreaming and the education of desire (Abensour, 1999).
By integrating utopian imagination holistically and transversally, higher education institutions can reimagine their roles and reposition themselves as sites of possibility, placing themselves differently by inviting people to desire, imagine, and embody hope through the transformation and transcendence of existing structures and limitations. Thus, placeful utopias become not merely aesthetic or esoteric constructs but profoundly interconnected, pedagogical places where collective visioning and holistic utopian imagination can take root and flourish. The utopian aspiration is a search for futures worth having. As lived environments, higher education institutions must align with broader planetary and ethical imperatives. When institutions prioritise aesthetic appeal over meaningful engagement, they risk creating ‘design scapes’ (Julier, 2005), spaces that, although visually striking, lack the depth required to cultivate academic and cultural belonging (Edensor and Sumartojo, 2015). As Casey (1997) reminds us, ‘places are not merely backdrops for action; they are integral to the actions and experiences that unfold within them’ (p. 201). By seeing themselves as placeful utopias, higher education institutions can transcend their functional and pragmatic roles, opening space for imagining holistic and transversal utopias.
However, putting these new kinds of utopian placefulness into action is not easy. Doing so requires the development of new methods capable of supporting communities to ‘open up’ the idea of the future and collectively envision the forms of ‘placefulness’ that higher education, in its unknowable future forms, might embrace. Here, we present two examples of methods that work toward this aim, the first of which relates to this theme of place.
Case 1: Playtopias and transversal futures
This section explores and illustrates how playful approaches can serve as modes of speculative educational inquiry, while providing methods for exploring alternative futures through the tangible co-creation of micro-utopias, or what we here call playtopias. A playtopia is conceived as a design experiment (Brown, 1992) and playful learning design (Holflod, 2022), inviting participants into shared imagination as epistemic and practical partners (Criado and Estalella, 2018; Dunne and Raby, 2013). Drawing on theories of play (Bateson, 1972; Fink et al., 2016), adult playfulness (Whitton, 2018, 2022), and playful learning in higher education (Boysen, 2024; Holflod, 2023; Nørgård et al., 2017; Nørgård and Whitton, 2024), playtopias encourage creativity and imagination, mediating a space between the real and the speculative.
Originally developed as part of a playful and collaborative design course, the playtopia approach examines imaginative micro-utopias through material co-creation (Dunne and Raby, 2013), where participants use diverse materials, from paper and blocks to sound and space, to envision desirable futures. Rather than focusing on humans as the sole agents of imagination, playtopias also recognise the intra-active agencies of materials, actors, spaces and ecological elements (Barad, 2007), reconfiguring knowledge production in terms of emergence. These experimental pedagogical practices employ utopian methods in teaching and learning to foster future-oriented practices. Central to the playtopia approach is the emphasis on social dreaming (Wahl, 2016) to immerse participants in desirable or imagined futures, provoking reflection and critical dialogue that combine speculative design, placefulness, utopian imagination, and playful co-creation.
Empirical contexts of use include teacher education, staff development, and higher education workshops in Denmark and the UK (2022–24). The collaborative playtopia rejects top-down visions of ‘mega-utopias’. Instead, it embraces the micro-utopias that emerge organically, facilitated – not dictated – by design (Dunne and Raby, 2013). This signifies that designers are not tasked with imagining futures on behalf of others but rather serve as catalysts for collective dreaming and co-creation. Participants express their visions through tangible prototypes and materialised artefacts in this process, fostering transformative ideas for education and society. These micro-utopias inspire re-evaluations of higher education and the exploration of radical alternatives. The playtopia approach is structured into three phases.
The three-phase process begins with Phase 1: Lived Experiences, in which a group of participants critically reflect on contemporary times and their personal encounters in education. They share both positive and challenging aspects of higher education, exchange perspectives, and critically examine utopian intentions within and across cultural, structural, technological, and societal dimensions of education.
In Phase 2: Collective Imaginations, participants advance beyond individual experiences to collaboratively envision how human, institutional, cultural, societal, systemic or planetary well-being and flourishing might be realised. Building on insights from the first phase, participants explore how humans, non-humans, and practices shaped by ideologies influence possibilities for education. Playtopias, as transversal spaces, seek to dissolve rigid disciplinary, institutional, and anthropocentric demarcations, paving the way for a pluralistic epistemology in which knowledge emerges through the entanglement of diverse bodies, materials, and atmospheres. The phase concludes with collective reflections through creative formats.
Finally, in Phase 3: Otherwise Futures, participants travel 25 years into the future to imagine life in a distant time. This phase encourages participants to imagine and inhabit potential futures, providing detailed descriptions of what these futures might entail, how they might feel, and who or what might inhabit them. Building on the previous phases, participants critically and practically refine their visions, expressing them through detailed descriptions and micro-utopias as creative and artistic expressions. The phase concludes with dialogues about the changes that have shaped the envisioned future over the past 25 years and actions that can be undertaken in the coming week, month, and year to bring such futures closer.
The micro-utopias created through this process act as co-creative boundary objects, maintaining shared meaning while embracing diverse interpretations, and prompting reflections on the interaction between utopian desires and lived experiences that foster new and different relations among participants (Holflod, 2023, 2024). Here, imaginative play acts as a medium for co-creating micro-utopias through tangible processes of construction and play. They connect speculative and tangible practices, embodying transversal futures as collective, co-desired longings for more prosperous and interconnected educational places.
Case 2: Speculative higher education futures
Our second example of utopian methods in action is concerned with speculation as a way to explore the utopian potentials of higher education and its futures. The focus on holistic, concrete utopias, described earlier in this paper, aligns with the writings of several scholars who utilise the concept of the ‘not-yet’, originating from the utopian hermeneutics of Bloch’s (1954/1995), to advocate for the need to ‘keep the future open’ (see, for instance, Amsler and Facer, 2017; Ross, 2016, 2022).
Speculative methods emerge as a response to the prevailing tendency in educational research to concentrate on approaches that promise certainty and closure by providing measurable evidence. For instance, the use of randomised controlled trials – which have long been critiqued in educational research for failing to account for the complex, contextual factors central to educational practice – continues to be regarded as the ‘gold standard’ by governments, agencies and funders (see Parra and Edwards, 2024). These methods have been described as ‘animated by the desire for certainty, willing to sacrifice complexity and diversity for ‘harder’ evidence and the global tournament of standards’ (Maclure, 2006: p. 730).
As Ross (2022) notes, speculative methods challenge this closed orthodox stance by providing openness, accommodating uncertainty, and facilitating a way of engaging with the future through examination of the present, all within a framework of responsible collaboration and emergence. For Ross, a speculative approach treats the future as a realm of uncertainty and creatively harnesses that uncertainty. It appreciates playful, imaginative, glitchy, and peculiar encounters while maintaining a sense of responsibility toward participants and the future itself (Ross, 2022).
One example of this approach is the Higher Education Futures project (Bayne and Ross, 2024), which developed a set of eight speculative scenarios for the future of higher education to support discussions about what higher education might become. These were accompanied by a set of eight ‘micro-fictions’ designed to demonstrate how fiction-writing can help to ‘put the flesh on’ speculative scenarios in an engaging way 1 . The aim was to engage with the utopian ethos of the future-in-progress, the ‘not yet’, assisting university communities to move beyond the operational, task-focused day-to-day and the corporate 5-year strategy to begin envisioning futures of ‘radical alterity’ (Osberg, 2010).
Since their creation in 2019, the scenarios have been used in multiple workshops with university communities worldwide, involving students, faculty, administrators, senior leaders, and external bodies, and have proven capable of supporting deep, open and often radical reimagining of the future of higher education. One workshop, held in early 2025 with colleagues in leadership roles at 10 European universities, asked attendees to work together to outline a learning and teaching strategy that would be appropriate to their given speculative scenario. From this exercise emerged glimpses of futures shaped by ‘educated hope’ that can only emerge when an open space of possibility is collectively agreed and worked upon. Three examples are given below.
The two cases presented here illustrate how contemporary utopian futuring in higher education offers a transition from pragmatic, incremental approaches to those that embrace holistic, speculative and transversal change. These methods emphasise collective dreaming and the re-imagination of education as a transformative space that transcends traditional disciplinary, institutional, cultural and societal boundaries, moving us toward the education of desire and educated hope. By integrating speculative methods and the utopian imagination, higher education institutions can nurture environments that prioritise relational engagement and inclusivity through co-creative world-building. This involves cultivating spaces and yet-to-be-realised utopian places where diverse perspectives coalesce into shared visions for the future, emphasising interconnected, collective and planetary well-being and systemic change. Such futures are not limited to improving existing structures but actively envision a radical reconstitution of education to address social, political and ecological challenges. The two exemplars demonstrate how speculative and playful utopian approaches can be applied in practice.
Conclusion: Imaginative, spirited and desired higher education futures
As argued earlier in this paper, the challenge of utopia in education is that it risks domestication, as Webb (2016) warns, through incremental reforms that absorb visionary proposals for change into prevailing systems without fundamentally altering their structures. This often results in superficial change rather than transformative reimagination. In contrast, holistic utopias seek to reimagine education beyond existing paradigms, aligning with Levitas’s (2013) assertion that utopia must be a method for the ‘imaginary reconstitution of society’. This broader perspective challenges the notion that change can only emerge from within the system, proposing instead that a new system must be envisioned altogether, one grounded in a holistic reconstitution of educational, social and ecological structures. Abensour’s (1999) concept of the education of desire is particularly relevant in this context. Rather than imposing fixed goals or prescriptive visions, the education of desire fosters an ongoing reawakening of aspirations and possibilities, encouraging educators and learners to cultivate desires that transcend the limitations of existing structures and to nurture imaginative and hopeful possibilities as a reorientation towards radically alternative futures (Halpin, 2003b).
Pedagogically, incorporating speculative and playful methods yields more engaging and transformative learning. The Playtopia approach, for example, has been deployed in teacher education and staff development to materialise alternative curricula through play. By building physical prototypes and enacting collective imaginaries, educators and students co-design micro-utopias for courses, forging new ways of knowing that break free from rigid standards. These activities exemplify ‘utopia as method’ (Levitas, 2013): rather than prescribing a fixed syllabus, they invite learners to reimagine the process of knowledge production itself in a structured way. However, our cases also highlight practical challenges. Speculative and playful methods are resource-intensive and may initially exist at the margins of formal structures. Workshops require time, facilitator skill and materials, which can conflict with the time-bounded, accountability-focused routines of academia. They may also struggle to include less-engaged voices, risking utopias that serve only a motivated few. Thus, embedding these approaches in mainstream practice demands ensuring inclusive participation. Nevertheless, the Speculative Futures and Playtopia cases illustrate that, when properly supported, speculative design and transversality can ignite the educated hope needed to transform universities in the face of neoliberal constraints.
As highlighted in our two cases, speculative and utopian methodologies provide alternative means of engaging across differences and emphasising the necessity of moving beyond disciplinary boundaries and repositioning possible higher education futures in new ways. Putting these methods into action requires substantial shifts in both policy and practice. To summarise, thinking with the methods and cases presented here, some first action points for materialising utopia, hope, and desire in education futures could focus on leadership and institutional policies to: ⁃ Re-place the university: Invest in ‘placeful utopias’ by cultivating spaces of collective belonging rather than corporate branding. Counters neoliberal design that prioritises visibility and competition. ⁃ Re-enact collective governance: Introduce co-creative workshops (as in Speculative Higher Education Futures) into strategic planning cycles, ensuring that staff and students help shape institutional futures instead of leadership adopting a top-down, managerial approach. ⁃ Re-imagine hopeful leadership: Train leaders in speculative and utopian methods and practices (scenario design, transversal thinking, futures literacy), equipping them to think and act beyond neoliberal short-termism.
Initial steps to take regarding teaching and learning practices within the institutions could then be: ⁃ Speculative pedagogy: Integrate scenario-writing, micro-fiction, and design-based imagination (as in Playtopias) into teaching. This cultivates openness to alternative futures, reconfiguring the existing boundaries and ethos of education. ⁃ Playful co-creation: Embed Playtopia-style and speculative co-design activities in courses, enabling and empowering students and staff to prototype educational futures collaboratively. Counters neoliberal pedagogy of passive consumption. ⁃ Transversal learning: Encourage postdisciplinary collaboration where ecological, technological, and cultural concerns intersect. This undermines neoliberal fragmentation into market-driven silos.
The above action points and first steps towards educating for utopia, hope and desire are not universal nor exhaustive. Rather, the pathways they indicate need to be contextualised and materialised into the concrete places where leadership, teaching and learning take place.
The presented theoretical framework and practical-speculative cases critique and expand the traditional boundaries of educational practices, introducing new ways to engage with the uncertainty, complexity, hope and desire inherent to educational change. They illustrate how utopian and speculative imagination, drawn from a holistic and transversal theoretical base, might look and feel and thus how speculative scenarios and playful micro-utopias can act as tangible approaches for collective dreaming and future-making. At the heart of both approaches – speculative and playful – is the engagement with the ‘not-yet’, the potential for futures as places not currently realised yet longed for. They encourage critical and reflexive insights into how we might navigate and transform the current educational landscape in terms of contemporary scholarship of utopia.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
