The growing complexity of modern life and the world system makes it increasingly difficult for citizens, media and decision makers to anticipate emerging issues and problems even in the short-term future. Think tanks and consulting firms try to fill this void with future studies, visions, and strategic scenarios, but in many cases lack scientific rigour.

Academic Foresights is a free online journal that provides short and incisive analyses by distinguished specialists in academia of how the situation in selected fields of expertise may evolve over the next decade. While predictions and forecasts are definitely not within the reach of the social sciences and humanities, it seems nevertheless possible to systematically extrapolate trends, key variables and fundamental structural patterns. This requires above all an accurate analysis of the present state, which is the starting point of all contributions to Academic Foresights.

The foresights are explorations. Missteps are possible. But new worlds can also be envisioned and found. Academic Foresights makes them now twice a year available in order to inform, provoke and contribute to an enlightened public debate.