Call for papers “Constructing futures through climate modelling” – Extended deadline

Extended Submission deadline: 30 June 2026

Guest editors:

Chris Groves
Swansea University, Criminology, Sociology and Social Policy Department, Swansea, United Kingdom

Alaa Al Khourdajie
Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom

Béatrice Cointe
The Center for the Sociology of Innovation (CSI), Paris, France

Natasha Frilingou
National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece

Alexandros Nikas
National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece

Special issue information:

Futures studies literature has long featured debates about the use of modelling as a tool for projecting or exploring alternative futures. These debates range across epistemological issues related to the idea of modelling futures, to the ethical and political implications of modelling practices and their outputs. Such debates have become particularly intense in recent years regarding the use of climate and techno-economic models as inputs into policies for climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Drawing on science and technology studies, futures studies methodologies, and other interdisciplinary approaches to knowledge production and its politics, key debate topics often include

• Uncertainty: How are uncertainties about possible futures constructed through models, and how are these constructions translated between technical, policy, and public domains?
• Relationships between formal models and decision-making: How do modelling practice and models themselves shape expectations and influence policy decisions – and conversely, how do political assumptions about the future shape modelling?
• Dominant future imaginaries: to what extent do modelling practices reinforce dominant future frames (such as least-cost optimisation) and marginalise alternative narratives about the future? Can interplay between quantitative and more qualitative models open up space for alternative, subaltern, and decolonial futures?

Given the global reach of integrated assessment models (IAMs) and other analytical tools, the political implications of mitigation and climate impact modelling as a means of projecting and designing futures have in particular been much discussed. Such models are accompanied by claims about their validity and robustness, which then serve as a basis for conferring legitimacy upon actions based on them, and imply that such models can somehow describe the future. A major challenge to such claims has come from evocations of diverse knowledge bodies and systems (including both indigenous and local knowledge), which question the assumption that such models can indeed be robustly global in scope. Other challenges have come from critiques of modelling assumptions along with their underlying political or ethical implications, leading to calls for greater attention to be paid in techno-economic modelling to issues of equity and justice. Overall, such challenges seek both to improve models’ robustness and depth, and also to address normative concerns arising from the exclusion of marginalised perspectives and alternative value systems in the construction of possible futures.

This special issue aims to foreground a range of diverse interventions in these and connected debates, by compiling a series of paired contributions in the shape of short communications (up to 3000 words in length, excluding references) to explore key issues surrounding the use of models as tools for constructing climate futures. Engaging directly with modelling communities working in the physical sciences, impact modelling and mitigation, as well as with the wider futures studies community, it aims to open up for reflexive consideration current perspectives on the benefits, limitations, and political significance of modelling, in the context of climate change and mitigation action and both at the policy level, and in a broader societal context.

We are interested in contributions that cover both the cross-cutting issues outlined above and specific, more technical issues related directly to thematic areas defined under the remit of the forthcoming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Seventh Assessment Report (AR7) report outlines. Thematically, these may include:

Integrating evidence & knowledge systems

• How different kinds and bodies of evidence and knowledge (including qualitative, quantitative, sectoral, local, and indigenous) can be integrated in constructing climate futures and what challenges arise as a result;
• How the vulnerability of different social groups is and can be represented in modelling, and how this relates to such groups’ own perspectives and agency on the future;
• How to work with potential irreducible divergence across modelling approaches, knowledge bases and epistemic cultures.

Model structures, assumptions & limitations

• The extent to which computer modelling is necessary for climate futures, what limitations it faces, and how challenges (such as opaqueness) may be addressed;
• The ways overshoots and high-impact (climate) events are captured by modelling, and how they are translated into policy narratives about the future;
• The interplay between expectations about the policy-relevance of models and tractability considerations in shaping and constraining how models are developed;
• Whether modelling paradigms other than the prevailing IAM approaches (e.g. agent-based models, system dynamics, sectoral models, etc.) might be complementary or even more robust in helping to anticipate diverse possible futures and to explore uncertainties;
• Why some heavily criticised features of global mitigation scenarios (e.g. high discount rates, high reliance on carbon dioxide removal technologies) tend to persist, while specific kinds of scenarios (such as low energy demand, post-growth, climate damage risks and other bidirectional feedbacks) remain under-explored.

Policy and societal goals

• How the concept of scenario ‘feasibility’ may obscure political judgements about the future that may constrain which mitigation pathways are considered;
• The ways overshoots and high-impact (climate) events feature in modelling, and how they are translated into policy narratives about the future;
• Under what circumstances may modelling widen the universe of possible futures under consideration, or inadvertently narrow it;
• What to do with obsolete or discarded climate futures – i.e., climate futures that were once central to modelling debates or policy narratives but no longer are;
• The extent to which modelling can explicitly incorporate goals of social justice, ecological sustainability, and human well-being.

Manuscript submission information:

Suggested deadline for submissions: 30 June 2026

You are invited to submit your manuscript at any time before the submission deadline. For any inquiries about the appropriateness of contribution topics, please contact Dr. Chris Groves via c.r.groves@swansea.ac.uk. This special issue aims to include as wide a range of perspectives as possible, in a format which encourages exchanges between contributing authors. It will therefore publish all articles as Short Communications of around 3000 words in length.

The journal’s submission platform (Editorial Manager®) is now available for receiving submissions to this Special Issue. Please refer to the Guide for Authors to prepare your manuscript, and select the article type of “VSI: Constructing futures through climate modelling” when submitting your manuscript online. Both the Guide for Authors and the submission portal could be found on the Journal Homepage here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/futures

All the submissions deemed suitable to be sent for peer review will be reviewed by at least two independent reviewers. Upon its editorial acceptance, your article will go into production immediately. It will be published in the latest regular issue, while be presented on the specific Special Issue webpage simultaneously. In regular issues, Special Issue articles will be clearly marked and branded.

Check out the FAQs on special issues.

Learn more about the benefits of publishing in a special issue.

Interested in becoming a guest editor? Discover the benefits of guest editing a special issue and the valuable contribution that you can make to your field.