Core principles of possibility studies can be found in our manifesto.

Human beings live in the realm of the possible as much as they do in the here and now of daily experience. We dream, hope, anticipate and create, exploring news spaces of possibility for ourselves and for others. These possibilities are not always appealing or exciting, however. Having too many options can be disorienting, innovating in unsustainable ways harmful, and spending time in virtual realities compete with less satisfying real encounters. And yet, engaging with the possible is, ultimately, what makes us human. Understanding how, when and why this is the case has been a topic of interest for the human and social sciences since their inception. And their exploration led to a variety of answers.

There is no single scientific account about our humanity, but an ongoing story we create and constantly challenge through multiple turns. For example, the narrative turn of the 1970s and 1980s began in semiology and literary studies and soon after led the constructionist movement that made social scientists pay closer attention to language, culture, and context. This emphasis on text and language left many dissatisfied, however, especially those concerned by objects, places and materials. Socio-materiality emerged in the 1990s and early 2000s as a new paradigm aimed at recognizing the relational nature of our existence, embedded as it is in systems that are at once social and material. After the 2000s, the new mobilities turn responded to yet another perceived limitation of focusing mainly on objects, places and institutions – their depiction as mostly static or, at least, seemingly static. This newest paradigmatic approach depicts the world in flux and continuous movement. 

Underpinning most of these developments (and the ones above are not, by any means, an exhaustive list) is an interest in possibility, its antecedents, processes, and consequences. The narrative turn brought into sharp focus the potential of language and culture to expand our experience of the here and now. Socio-materiality redefined agency by recognising objects as actants. Mobilities helped us reflect on how a world in movement is also one that is constantly changing. 

There are other fields of research that developed since the 1950s to contribute substantially to our understanding of possibility and also its limits. For example, Futures studies, an area with deep historical roots, emerged as an academic discipline mid 1960s, opening up new spaces for thinking about the future and the processes through which we envision it, from prediction to forecast and foresight (central topics for a more recent area of inquiry called anticipation studies). The interest in imagination is centuries old and, during this long time, the importance granted to this process has waxed and waned. The past decades ‘re-discovered’ this phenomenon in a variety of disciplines, from philosophy to psychology and neuroscience. Most of all, research into creativity consolidated into a scientific discipline especially after the 1950s and is today a blooming area of study featuring several dedicated journals and a variety of books, handbooks and encyclopaedias.  

These and other developments mark the start of a potential ‘possibilities turn’ within the human and social sciences, a turn that is not only announced by increasing levels of research into possibility-related phenomena, but also by the evolution of society in the 21st century. From speedy advances in ICT and virtual reality to new technologies that revolutionise transport, medicine, and design, we live in a day and age that opens new horizons of possibility for individuals and societies alike while, at the same time, revealing serious dangers and unintended consequences (from the rise of misinformation on social media to climate change).

In this societal and scientific context, the area of possibility studies concerns itself with the triggers, processes and outcomes of engaging with the possible at a psychological, material, technological, sociocultural and political level. It offers thus a wide, interdisciplinary umbrella for a series of either well-established or more recent fields of research including creativity, innovation, imagination, serendipity, play, counterfactual thinking, the future, anticipation and utopias, among others. The great advantage of placing these domains within a broader ‘turn’ is the fact that research on the possible becomes inter-, multi- and transdisciplinary by necessity, encouraging dialogues across the natural and social sciences, the arts and humanities, theoretical and applied fields.

In order to capture this openness and inclusivity, the possible is defined as those features, processes and events that can come into being and transform what already exists. In other words, beyond the ‘here and now’ of concrete experience, possibilities designate the ‘elsewhere’, the ‘not yet here’ and the ‘nowhere’ that, through anticipation, imagination and creativity, shape how individuals and communities think, feel, and act in the present and build a future. This is not a romanticised view, but a critical reflection on who, how, what, when, where and why we strive towards possibilities and impossibilities.