ABSTRACT
The concluding chapter of the volume, In Pursuit of Hope—Lessons, Limits, and Future Directions, reflects on the collective intellectual journey of producing an interdisciplinary volume on climate futures, characterising it as both a scholarly contribution and a pedagogical exercise in cross-boundary collaboration. The chapter synthesises three key dimensions: first, it distils lessons from the volume’s tripartite structure—Imagining, Designing, and Governing Climate Futures—highlighting how early-career researchers reframe climate futures as plural, contested, and constructed assemblages rather than deterministic projections. Second, it articulates the volume’s contributions in advancing a “next generation approach” that blurs boundaries between research and advocacy, science, and art, mobilising diverse epistemologies to generate actionable understanding grounded in hope and justice. Third, it acknowledges limits of the volume: acknowledging the optimism that might have underexplored the darker realities of climate futures, geographic gaps (where insights or scholarship from places like Latin America, Arctic regions, small-island states are not included), untouched themes (like fossil fuel transitions, climate migration, geoengineering), and methodological “inertia” (where different chapters employing different methodologies might disrupt a steady flow of readership across the volume). Nevertheless, these limits are generative sites for future direction. The chapter concludes by positioning the volume as an invitation to innovative climate scholarship across disciplines, which grounds future-oriented research in creativity, solidarity, and moral reasoning. It argues that hope is not naive optimism but sustained commitment to shaping liveable futures on a warming planet.
