Research projects

Ineqint – Youth in Europe

Duration: 2024–2028

  The project Ineqint, which is primarily based on a survey called YES! explores different aspects of young people’s conditions and opportunities in school, during their free time, and within their families. 

Transformative partnerships 2030

Duration: 2020–2025

As part of the 2030 Agenda, all UN member states agreed that sustainable development should be achieved through multi-stakeholder partnerships. But do they?

Automating authority

Duration: 2024–2030

The aim of this project is to build an interdisciplinary research environment that analyzes the proliferation of AI in the public sector, its impact on the decisions being made and its effects for democracy.

4C – The Swedish Consortium for the study of Contemporary Criminal Collaboration

Duration: 2024-2030

4C seeks to expand the focus beyond narrow phenomena like gun violence by generating knowledge on the formation and group dynamics of criminal collaborations; how they arise, evolve, dissolve, and draw in people.

Causes and consequences of environmental protests

Duration: 2023–2028

Environmental protest events are increasing. Does it have any consequences for policy? With global data-sets, this project will try to answer that question.

Transformative ethics

Duration: 2025–2029

How can we make an informed choice, if we do not even grasp the outcome of the choice? This question is especially relevant when you are facing a so called transformative choice.

The Mimir Center for Long Term Futures

Duration: 2023-2025

A research environment at IFFS with a mission to carry out world leading, rigorous academic basic research on issues regarding the long-term future of civilization.

Ethics of coordination

Duration: 2023–2026

We need new ethics to understand our duties towards others in matters such as climate change.

Finding popular solutions to climate change

Duration: 2024–2028

A global investigation of public opinions about climate policies and their determinants.

Conservative climate justice for a sustainable transformation

Duration: 2024–2028

 The purpose of this project is to determine whether, and how, conservative principles can support an effective and just low-carbon transition.

Ethnic stereotypes over time - a Nordic comparison

Duration: 2022-2026

How has stereotypes of immigrant and minority groups evolved in Finland and Sweden? Comparative text analysis is used to understand how they have changed since 1945.

Kremlin influence and the destabilization of Swedish democracy

Duration: 2024–2028

An analysis of geostrategic market offensives, Russian influence operations, Swedish partners, and the threat of oligarchic capitalism

Optimism trap or optimism springboard?

Duration: 2025–2028

Young people in immigrant families have a markedly higher educational and occupational aspirations than others. This optimism has been regarded as something positive, but it seems it can also lead to a higher degree of failure. This project will take a closer look at the outcomes.

Eyewitness video and human rights practice

Duration: 2022-2026

This project will study the interplay between eyewitness videos in a digital media landscape and human rights practice.

Hidden convergence in ethics

Duration: 2024–2027

Ethics has for a long time been dominated by several competing traditions. But is it entirely true that these traditions have not moved closer with time. That is what this project aims to investigate.

Who cares for children and elders in welfare states?

Duration: 2021–2025

In Sweden, Germany and Italy welfarecapitalists, churches and migrants have been given the responsibility for health and social care. How did this happen and why?

Ethics and economy

Duration: 2025-2028

This project will try to build and test a model that includes dutifulness and contracting, as a way of studying the tension between what is best for the individual and what is best for the group.

Swedish preparedness for silent health crises and organizational learning after the swine flu, the heatwave, and the COVID-19 pandemic

Duration: 2024–2027

This project aims to identify organizational conditions for efficient crisis management within intensive care units and special accommodations. It will also give recommendations on how the regions can strengthen their preparedness for silent health crises.

Cogito Machina

Duration: 2025–2028

Is AGI emergent? In order to know, several questions need to be answered and this project aims to provide the answeres. What is AGI? What is required for a system to have it, and how might we know whether AGI is emergent in a system. 

Status and stability

Duration: 2024–2027

The past years the migration laws have shifted from the permanent to the temporary. What does the aspect of time mean for the individual's legal status?

Beyond reductionism: Contingent grounding and the Mind-Body Problem

Duration: 2023–2026

I det här projektet undergrävs de två traditionella sätt på vilka man har betraktat kropp-medvetandeproblemet och föreslår en ny teori.

How policy creates politics

Duration: 2023–2026

Why do political actors find it increasingly difficult to design effective policies and address pressing social problems. This project tries to find the answer in changes of the policy feedback mechanisms by using longitudinal datasets from 30 countries.

Writing and stylistics

Duration: 2021–2027

Writing and stylistics, "Text och stil", is an initiative offered to researchers in Sweden, which offers workshops and classes in more creative academic writing. 

Ambivalence: A new unified theory

Duration: 2025–2028

Having mixed feelings about something can help us to deal with conflicts. Since this view on ambivalence challenges traditional approaches that see ambivalence as a flaw, this project aims to develop a new theory of ambivalence.

Evaluated by a robot. A study of the automation of the recruitment process in a Swedish municipality

Duration: 2022–2027

In a unique project the researchers will study the differences between an AI-based interview robot's and human recruiters' evaluations of jobseekers in a Swedish municipality during a year.

When out of money

Duration: 2026-2029

The 2001 art project "Money - a Commentary on the New Economy", involved artists from Scandinavia and the former Soviet Union. 25 years later, the digital networks formerly associated with freedom of expression are now representing disinformation and repression.

The Black Shore

Duration: 2024–2027

How can we understand life on the former Swedish Caribbean colony Saint-Barthélemy? This project aims to add to our undestanding using artistic methods as a complement to the juridical documents available in archives.

Modern Vikings in the East

Duration: 2021–2025

What role did Swedish institutions, experts, and elites play in the economic and political development in post-Soviet Russia, with corruption, tax evasion and the emergence of the oligarchy as a result?

Selling pictures

Duration: 2025–2028

This project will place the current discussions concerning AI-generated images in a historical context, comparing it to two previous technological breakthroughs that have affected the use of pictures for commercial purposes. 

Expertise in crises

Duration: 2023-2026

Governments are now reevaluating their post-pandemic preparedness. The project analyzes how society can use expertise to develop science-based policies in times of crisis.

Claim-based distributive theories

Duration: 2023–2026

The overarching purpose of this project is to present a framework for claim-based distributive theories. Since scarcity is a ubiquitous societal problem, the project has wide-reaching relevance for society.

BRIDGEGAP

Duration: 2024–2027

A multidisciplinary project researching corruption with innovative methods and technologies.

Social norms for cooperation under collective risk

Duration: 2024–2027

How could people be individually motivated to cooperate to reduce the risk of a collective loss?

Immigrant women in European labour markets

Duration: 2023–2027

Why do immigrant women experience a double disadvantage in the labour market? Understanding the reasons is the first step towards creating efficient measures to change the situation.

The future of disabilities: The ethics and politics of disability and technology

Duration: 2024-2027

This project will investigate how theories on equality and justice are affected by the fact that many disabilities are becoming a matter of choice as a consequence of the use of new technologies.

Politics of AI & Health: From Snake Oil to Social Good

Duration: 2021-2027

The potential for AI to improve health and healthcare systems is considerable. However, there is a pressing need to critically engage with the politics of AI and health, and this project will do so from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Setting priorities during pandemics

Duration: 2023–2026

This projects aims to present a framework for making sound decisions in times of pandemics - when experience and time is scarce, and uncertainties are many. 

Climate emotions and affective dilemmas

Duration: 2023–2026

An interdisciplinary projects that tries to understand the normativization of climate emotions. How "should" we feel about climate change?

The conversational context and conceptual engineering

Duration: 2025–2028

Conceptual engineering concerns what it is for a concept to be defective and therefor ameliorated or abolished. The goal of this project, however, is to shift the focus to the role of the context, which might help us understand conflicts about the meaning of our words.

How to solve the climate crisis together

Duration: 2024–2027

This projects aims to solve ideological conflicts when it comes to climate politics, by suggesting climate work that aligns with the different ideologies' values.

Future Barometer

Duration: 2025–2027

This project will aim to understand the public's future-oriented attitudes in different contexts in order to understand how to better strengthen societal resilience.

AI, power and politics

Duration: 2025–2030

This project is part of a cluster housed by Umeå University, bringing together leading scholars from several disciplines to investigate how AI is affecting democracy.

Rationing for the climate

Duration: 2025–2027

With climate change it has become evident that we need to reduce our consumption. Could this be done using rationing? This project aims to understand public attitudes toward climate-motivated rationing.

Understanding Political Climate Passivity in Sweden and the US

Duration: 2023-2026

Many are concerned about climate change and inadequate climate policies. This project aims to figure out why most adults don't use their democratic opportunities to make an impact.

The Technology Futures and Limits Project

Duration: 2025

This project aims to explore some of the fundamental limits of technology and its long-term future.

Wicked problem governance

Duration: 2023-2026

By investigating the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change on the interaction between science, policy and the public, this project aims to solve how public governance can better deal with severe crises in the future.

Using impure altruism to promote pro-environmental behavior

Duration: 2023–2025

Is it possible to nudge people into more environmentally friendly behaviour using impure altruism as a driver?

The predictive capacity of the social sciences

Duration: 2025–2026

This is an initiative to develop principles and methods for a more future-oriented social science, by starting up a discussion among researchers in social sciences, as well in Sweden as abroad.

Photographic Lives

Duration: 2025–2027

The development of an archive for future research, documenting the history of photography in Sweden.

International Panel on Social Progress

Duration: Ongoing

Many wealthy societies face challenges and developing countries tend to attempt to imitate their solutions in order to end poverty and hardships instead of finding new models. Can we hope for a better society in the future?

World Values Survey

Duration: Ongoing

World Values Survey is a global research network studying trends in values all over the world. Their secretariat is located at the Institute for Futures Studies.

Global Social Norms

Duration: 2022-

The Global Social Norms network is a research collaboration with its base at the Institute for Futures Studies, connecting social norms researchers from over 130 countries.

Progress in Ethics

Duration: 2022–

This is an international network of researchers from a variety of disciplines, providing a forum for discussions on what progress have been made in the field of ethics.