Back to the future: Not looking into the future but at futures

This speech is about the trickiness of the future. Thus, the author will share her thoughts about why she thinks it is important for researchers interested in work-life matters to engage in a discussion about the future. She would like to stress the importance of engaging in discussions about the future, since the purpose of her talk is not to encourage work-life researchers to collectively convert into oracles, prophets, or fortune-tellers. Her talk has the following structure: She will start by arguing why she believes the future is important. She will then continue with a note on the absence of futures studies in working life-related journals, and the absence of work-life matters in future studies. She will describe some of the ways in which research has formulated knowledge about the future. The talk will be finished by returning to why she thinks working life research needs to engage in the future.