Call for Submissions: twentyfifty

Utopien für eine demokratische Gesellschaft. Ein Essay-Wettbewerb.

Das Alexander von Humboldt Institut für Internet und Gesellschaft (HIIG) und Wissenschaft im Dialog (WID) laden Forschende aller Karrierestufen und Disziplinen weltweit ein, demokratische Zukunftsvisionen für das Jahr 2050 in narrativer oder essayistischer Form zu entwickeln. Ausgewählte Autor*innen werden zu einem internationalen Writing Retreat eingeladen; ihre Geschichten werden in einer Publikation veröffentlicht. Wir freuen uns auf Ihre Einreichungen bis zum 15. Juni 2026.

twentyfifty – Utopias for a Democratic Society
Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society (HIIG)

Deadline for submissions: 15 June 2026
Retreat: 7–10 October 2026, in or around Berlin
The venue is yet to be announced
Hosted by Nataliia Sokolovska

Aim and scope

Democracy is not a fixed construct, it is an evolving practice, a negotiation and constantly in transformation. Yet much of democratic theory describes what is, where it comes from and not what could be. With twentyfifty, we ask researchers to do something different: to use their expertise not to analyse the present or past, but to imagine the future.

We are looking for scholars who engage seriously with the question of what democratic life might look like in 2050. Not as a thought experiment, but as a research-grounded act of imagination. Submissions can take the form of a short story, a dialogue, a diary entry, a series of letters, or any narrative form that brings democratic futures to life. The only requirement is that the vision must be rooted in scholarship, but utopian in ambition. Driven by one question: What kind of democracy do we want to live in?

Submissions should connect to one or more of the following areas. They are not rigid categories but overlapping fields:

Living, Belonging and Community 
How will we live together in a digitalised world? Who gets to shape our neighbourhoods, draw the line between what belongs to all and what remains private? Who decides which vision of community counts? 

Knowledge and Learning 
How do we make sense of a world that keeps changing? What role do schools, universities and new forms of learning play when knowledge is everywhere? Who gets access to it, who gets to define what counts and who is left out?

Work and Purpose
How do we find new meaning and purpose as automation and AI reshape the world of work? Who creates value, who finds meaning and who gets to negotiate the rules of a new social contract?

Governing, Participation and Public Administration
How do we govern and make collective decisions when political power shifts and trust in institutions fades? Who participates, who is heard and who gets to shape the new system?

Security and Freedom
How do democratic societies protect themselves without betraying their own principles? Who sets the boundary between safety and liberty?

What to submit?

Story Idea (max. 1,000 words, English): What is the idea behind your story? Describe the future you want to imagine, the perspective you bring, and the democratic question at its heart. You do not need to submit a finished story, the complete story will be developed during the writing retreat.

Research connection (max. 300 words): How does your narrative relate to your own research?

CV (max. 1 page): Please indicate your current institutional affiliation and research field.

Thematic clustering: Tell us which thematic cluster(s) does your story relate to?

Publications: List your three most recent publications.

Who can apply?

Researchers at all career stages (at least final PhD phase), from all disciplines, worldwide. We explicitly welcome submissions from every field: whether you are a physician or a physicist, an engineer or a philosopher, a sociologist or an artist, a legal scholar or an educator, an economist or a climate scientist – if your research gives you something to say about the future of democratic society, we want to hear it.

Selection criteria

What happens next?

A review panel of researchers and storytelling experts will select 10–12 authors and invite them to an international writing retreat (in or around Berlin, travel expenses covered). Over three days, they will gather in a space where research meets imagination and rigour meets speculation. Working with professional storytelling coaches and methods from futures research, authors will develop their narratives. Final stories will be published in a story collection.

Timeline

About twentyfifty

twentyfifty builds on HIIG’s twentyforty – Utopias for a Digital Society (2019/2020), in which 13 researchers from 10 countries wrote research-based future narratives that were published as an open-access volume and translated into an exhibition, film, audio and podcast formats. twentyfifty takes this approach into a new context: from digital society to democratic society – because the question is no longer what technology can do, but what kind of society we want to be.

Contact

Dr. Nataliia Sokolovska (nataliia.sokolovska@hiig.de) and Sarah Spitz (sarah.spitz@hiig.de)