Speculating on Higher Education in 2041—Earthworms and Liminalities

Abstract

AbstractWhat if… this chapter asks, might higher education be twenty years from now? This chapter speculates a future that takes place 20 years from now, a future that acknowledges the challenges of the present, as discussed at greater length in the earlier chapters. We take up speculative inquiry as a method to consider a future where the teens of 2021 bring their experience of living and learning during this pandemic time to the shaping and leadership of universities in 2041. Beginning with a what-if scenario of a reconceived higher education, we create a speculative fiction text—a letter from the future—around which we perform a diffractive reading (Barad, 2014). What this diffraction brings about is a higher education imaginary of activisms and revolts that result from current tensions and challenges in education and research. The imaginary does not predict the future but offers a critical lens through which to make sense of this present and the possible futures tied to it. In so doing, we suggest potentialities of practices like elevating decolonised ways of knowing and engaging geographical, human and nonhuman diversities in campuses across urban and remote areas. Traversing twenty years from now, the chapter speculates on higher education, spanning virtual and physical spaces for re-connection of research, learning and assessment with, in and through assemblies of diverse beings, human and otherwise. The chapter concludes with a codetta, which leaves the reader with a brief account of a speculative encounter with Socrabots as they prepare to enter the teaching profession in the 2040s.