Studio update – Spring 2022

This academic year I am on sabbatical leave finishing three long-running projects and planning to focus more on applications of the archaeological imagination to matters of common and pressing contemporary concern, especially through design foresight and futures literacy. This is why I have put to one side my critical commentary on all things archaeological and…

Futures Literacy: how to decolonize the future

December 8 – 12 2020. Tamara (Carleton) and I were at the UNESCO Futures Literacy Summit [Link] representing our research group – Foresight at Stanford [Link]. We are standing for design foresight and what we are now calling creative pragmatics (in our forthcoming book – [Link]). Competencies, tools and techniques, mindsets not for predicting the…

Update – the actuality of the archaeological past

I have contributed little to this site Since 2016. I have been writing (Greece and Rome: a new model of antiquity [Link]), running experiments in fieldwork (Project Borderlands [Link]), exploring applied archaeology (with a host of organizations and corporations), asking questions of the proper role of the academic, the researcher, the scholar. In this contemporary…

urban futures – the cultural field

For nearly ten years I have been serving on the International Advisory Board in Rotterdam [Link] – offering comment on the city’s life and plans. This year we turned to culture in the city. A group of us joined a year long process to reach out to stakeholder groups and institutions, to the people of…

Update – Summer 2017

July 2017. While over the last few months I’ve neglected posting my ideas, thoughts, news and commentary here at mshanks.com, I’ve had a fascinating series of encounters with some wonderful people, organizations and businesses. And I am preparing some posts – I greatly value the process of logging this learning journey I am so lucky…

strategic foresight|design thinking – online course

Today we launched our new online class with Stanford Continuing Studies – [Link]. Strategic Foresight and Design Thinking Here’s how Tamara (Carleton) and I describe what we have to offer: “We live in an interconnected world where the old answers don’t seem to apply, where even successful businesses need to embrace radical change, where global…