GLOBAL FUTURES EDUCATION

Hello, and welcome to Global Futures Education! I'm Jennifer Gidley.

After forty years of professional and academic experience as an innovative educator, psychologist, and international futures researcher, the most important task I see is providing an up-to-the-minute series of courses to help people face the grand global futures challenges and find solutions to them.

My concern. I'm concerned that we live in a world where the escalating climate crisis has become very frightening for many young people. Even climate scientists are beginning to say they are frightened by the intensity and acceleration of heat domes, rain bombs, unprecedented floods and wildfires, and slowing ocean currents.

My motivation. I'm motivated by the urgency with which we must act to implement the solutions at hand if we are to regenerate a habitable planet. My commitment is to use my decades-long experience and knowledge to create the “Global Futures of Climate” Online Course.

My inspiration. As a mother of two adult children, and three grandchildren, I'm inspired to ensure they have a liveable world in which to grow up. I want to know that I have done everything I possibly can to protect their vulnerable futures.

My hope. My most earnest hope is that there is still time to turn the climate crisis around, and that we all act with knowledge, integrity and speed. I offer this climate education program in this hope.

As the longest-serving President (2009-2017) of the World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF) I gained valuable insights from the highest levels of global thinking into the complexity and wide impacts of climate crisis and other pressing global challenges. WFSF is the global peak body for futures studies scholarship and a key partner of UNESCO and UN-ECOSOC.

During this engagement I was fortunate to be immersed in the critical new thinking that futures researchers bring to the world, as I led an Executive Board drawn from eleven countries, and a network of 300 futures scholars from over 60 countries. Thanks to acquiring UNESCO funding my team pioneered the development of futures empowerment leadership programs for young future leaders in several developing countries. I actively promoted talented young women futurists, many of whom have become leading professional academics and corporate advisors.

Through my consulting, research and speaking with think tanks from the UAE to Iran, from London to Washington DC, my global networks give me access to experts, including world-leading scientists, thought leaders, academic institutions, and high-level global organisations.

My experience in developing online courses in futures thinking and foresight includes two Australian universities, an online American university, an Iranian Think Tank in Tehran, and most recently the European Commission Future Forward project in collaboration with TED-Ed. All this informs the Global Futures Education programs.

I am currently an Adjunct Professor at the University of Technology, Sydney, in The Institute for Sustainable Futures.

You can read more about my academic and professional credentials, services and publications, on my website.

Jennifer brings a refreshingly warm, open and down-to-earth personal style to her speaking. Her scholarship, wide experience, maturity and deep understanding of people’s needs is valued by her international clients.

Based in Australia, Jennifer has presented across Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia. She has developed a unique virtual style and can design for you virtual Keynotes, Workshops, Webinars, and pre-recorded Videos.

Recent highlights include:

• Keynote: “Big Picture Futures: A Human-centred Approach to Global Challenges” to Oxford University Press Marketing Summit Global, 2023. 
• Keynote: “Complex Futures of Education” to School of Computer Science (UTS) School Retreat and Planning Day, 2022.
• “Why the 21^st Century needs more Female Scientists” 2021 World Conference on Science Literacy Virtual. Beijing, China. 2021. 
• Keynote: “Contrasting Human Futures and the Myth of Techno-Transhumanism” MystTech Conference: Seattle, WA, USA. 2021.
• “Postformal Education for Complex Futures of Uncertainty and Volatility” 2^nd Int Meeting on Higher Education, Chile, 2021.
• Webinar: “A Short Introduction to the Future Post-Covid” with Dr. Lawrence Jones. Edison Electric Institute. Washington DC.  2020. 
• Keynote: “Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow” Opening Keynote, Lecture Series “Knowledge & Futures”, University of Erlangen, Germany, 2017.
• Keynote: “Evolution of Consciousness and Paradigm Change” 20^th Anniversary of the Club of Budapest, Paris, France. 2013.

See Jennifer's professional website for more about her Speaking experience.

See Jennifer's profile on the International Women and Climate Speaker's Database.

See Jennifer's profile on The Futures Agency.

To check Jennifer's availability, in person or virtually:
Email: jennifer(at)jennifergidley.com

“Gidley has given us a stunning description of the new field of futures studies and of how we humans can help choose, and shape, the coming future.” 
- Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Wendell Bell, PhD, Yale University.

This ground-breaking book is immensely enjoyable and stimulating for all readers. Its breadth and scope is astonishing as it considers some of the most burning questions of our time: What is The Future?; Is it a time yet to come?; Or is it a Utopian place?; Does the future have a history?; Is there only one future or are there many possible futures?

Gidley asks if the future can ever be truly predicted or if we create our own futures - both hoped for and feared - by our thoughts, feelings, and actions, and concludes by analysing how we can learn to study our futures.

We have always yearned to know what lies ahead, whether threat or safety, scarcity or abundance. Throughout human history, our forebears tried to create certainty in the unknown, by seeking to influence outcomes with sacrifices to gods, preparing for the unexpected with advice from oracles, and by reading the stars through astrology.

As scientific methods improve and computer technology develops we become ever more confident of our capacity to predict and quantify the future by accumulating and interpreting patterns from the past.

Yet the truth is there is still no certainty to be had, because there is no one future. There are as many futures as there are people on the planet. We can all image, design, and begin to create the futures we want: futures that are healthy, equitable and sustainable.

‘The Future’ is the first Oxford University Press book on futures thinking. It is now used in futures studies programs in Universities around the world, and is translated into Arabic, Turkish, Italian and Greek with several other translations now in progress.

REVIEW NOTES

"We all should give Jennifer Gidley a standing ovation. This is an absolutely wonderful source, as a basic textbook about the field, and as a very good short introduction to futures for everyone."
- Emeritus Professor Jim Dator. Editor, World Futures Review

"Brilliant and concise. This book not only raises the issues in a highly readable manner, but also raises awareness, and as such I can recommend it unreservedly."
- David Lorimer. Editor, Network Review