Research Workshop: Rehearsing the Future: Visionary Fiction and Speculative Inquiry as Methodology
Dr. Pedro Rosselló González Puerto Rico Convention Center
100 Convention BoulevardSan Juan, San Juan 00907
Puerto Rico
This interactive research methods workshop explores visionary fiction as a mode of inquiry—using speculative worldbuilding to surface assumptions, test ethical commitments, and imagine alternative configurations of power, memory, and relationality. Participants will experiment with emergent, speculative and justice-oriented methods for researching futures often rendered unimaginable within conventional methodological frames.
Participants are asked to read the following in preparation for the workshop:
- Imarisha, W. (2015). Rewriting the future: Using science fiction to re-envision justice. Walidah Blog. Retrieved from: https://www.walidah.com/blog/2015/2/11/rewriting-the-future-using-science-fiction-to-re-envision-justice.
- Koro, M. & Wolgemuth, J. (2023). Methodologies for the apocalypse: Unthinking the thinkable. In Qualitative Inquiry, 29(6). 651-658.
- Watts, A. (forthcoming, June 2026). Apocalyt-agogy: Teaching critical qualitative methods at the end of the world. Departures in Critical Qualitative Methods, 15(2).
Who should attend:
- Entry: Little to no experience with this topic
- Moderate: Some experience with this topic
- Advanced: Much experience with this topic
Registration Options
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Registration Options
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Price |
|---|---|
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Presenters
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FREE |
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Current ASHE Student Member
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$25.00
Price will increase to $30.00 on
10/16/26
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Current ASHE Member
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$35.00
Price will increase to $45.00 on
10/16/26
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Non-ASHE Member (Guest or Expired Member)
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$45.00
Price will increase to $55.00 on
10/16/26
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Product Add-ons
| Add-ons | Price |
|---|---|
| Donation to the ASHE Graduate Student Travel Fund View Product | FREE Donation |
Agenda
| November 5 | |
| 2:00 PM - 2:20 PM |
Framing Visionary Fiction as Inquiry
Methodological focus: Epistemology, imagination, and the limits of proceduralism • Opening grounding and ethical commitments for collective inquiry. • Conceptual framing: -Walidah Imarisha -Mirka Koro and Jennifer Wolgemuth •Provocation •Activity |
| 2:20 PM - 3:05 PM |
Doing Visionary Fiction: Speculative Worldbuilding as Method
Methodological focus: Research design, ethics, and epistemic rupture •Participants are situated in a speculative research context related to higher education, land, and power. • Participants collectively construct a future grounded in present injustices rather than fantasy abstraction. •Participants are asked to treat the apocalypse not as an event but as an ethical-practical condition shaping inquiry. •Groups confront a live methodological problem. |
| 3:05 PM - 3:30 PM |
Methodological Debrief I: What Vision Reveals
Methodological focus: Reflexivity, positionality, and ethics •Facilitated debrief connecting speculative decisions to methodological concepts. •Attention to land and memory. |
| 3:30 PM - 3:40 PM | Break |
| 3:40 PM - 4:20 PM |
Emergent Strategy and Apocalyptic Methods
Methodological focus: Adaptation, iteration, and inquiry under uncertainty • Framing emergent strategy as a methodological orientation aligned with both Imarisha and Koro & Wolgemuth (and Watts, forthcoming). •Small groups redesign a familiar research component (e.g., ethics protocol, positionality framework, analytic strategy). •Focus on how research methods change when futures cannot be stabilized in advance. |
| 4:20 PM - 4:45 PM |
Methodological Debrief II: Legitimacy, Risk, and Power
Methodological focus: Rigor, credibility, and refusal •Collective discussion: •Participants articulate one methodological commitment inspired by visionary fiction they might carry into future research. |
| 4:45 PM - 5:00 PM |
Closing: Researching Futures That Do Not Yet Exist
Methodological focus: Orientation toward inquiry in the aftertimes •Final reflection: What does it mean to treat imagination as a research method rather than a supplement? •Re-centering Imarisha’s claim that visionary fiction aims not to predict the future, but to change the conditions under which futures are imagined. •Invitation to continue methodological experimentation grounded in justice, land, memory, and collective survival. |
Ali Watts, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the School of Counseling, Higher Education, Leadership & Foundations at Bowling Green State University. One major thread of her research and teaching focuses on strategies for resisting compliance culture and proceduralism by uplifting radical creativity and ‘dreamstorming.’ Solo and collaborative work on playful pedagogies and speculative research methodologies has been published in journals such as Teaching in Higher Education, Departures in Critical Qualitative Research and Culture Machine as well as forthcoming books on ludic and co-constructed teaching.
Event Information
- An opportunity to share how the event can be more accessible for you is provided in the registration form. For questions about accessibility, please reach out to the ASHE Staff at office@ashe.ws.
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