PROJECTS

Imagination is implicated nearly everywhere in individual and social cognition. Our research efforts, coordinated across the campus community and with partners around the world, and our programs, democratizing access to the techniques and methods that allow each and every one of us to use imagination to take control of the future, build empathy and compassion, and cultivate the communities we need, bring the latest theoretical advancements and technologies to bear on our four main areas of research:

Imagination White

Creating an Atlas of Imagination to advance our understanding of how imagination functions—in the brain, in our lives, in society—for individuals, groups, and cultures. Learn more…

Tools White

Develop learning practices and technological tools that spark imagination and  leverage its power. Learn more…

Spec Futures White

Fostering the ability to imagine alternate probable, possible, and preferable futures as a key 21st competency. Learn more…

To Stars White

Looking to space and the cosmos to re-imagine our place in the universe. Learn more…

Practitioners of the emergent field of Speculative Futures Studies use speculative forms – including, but not limited to, art, literature, and theory- to confront the legacies of imperialism, colonialism, and racism in order to imagine and enact more sustainable and just futures.

Science explains it, but
art may be the key to finding it.

The Speculative Futures Collective seeks to cultivate research with faculty, graduate students, and community members using speculative cultural forms and theories to collaborate on the future of education, ecology, gender, sexuality, and race.

Practitioners of the emergent field of Speculative Futures Studies use speculative forms – including, but not limited to, art, literature, and theory- to confront the legacies of imperialism, colonialism, and racism in order to imagine and enact more sustainable and just futures.

Science explains it, but
art may be the key to finding it.

The Speculative Futures Collective seeks to cultivate research with faculty, graduate students, and community members using speculative cultural forms and theories to collaborate on the future of education, ecology, gender, sexuality, and race.

Unlike intelligence, memory, and creativity, there is an alarming lack of coherent theory and a thin empirical literature on imagination. Why alarming? Imagination may be one of the most important keys to human flourishing and human progress, with spiritual and evolutionary adaptive benefit.

The science of imagination needs a guide for the future.

The Atlas of Imagination is the guide, focusing coherent theoretical models of imagination to drive further investigation and the tools needed for the empirical study of the neurodiversity of imagination. 

Unlike intelligence, memory, and creativity, there is an alarming lack of coherent theory and a thin empirical literature on imagination. Why alarming? Imagination may be one of the most important keys to human flourishing and human progress, with spiritual and evolutionary adaptive benefit.

The science of imagination needs
a guide for the future.

The Atlas of Imagination is the guide, focusing coherent theoretical models of imagination to drive further investigation and the tools needed for the empirical study of the neurodiversity of imagination. 

The Clarke Center is a research-and-practice hub, where the best insights from the neuroscience of imagination are connected with the latest in technology and put to use to unlock the transformative power of imagination across age groups, and communities to tackle the most pressing issues facing the planet.

Imagination discovers
new possibilities within the impossible.

Imagination is at the root of empathy and compassion. Imagination gives rise to hope. We aim to unleash the power of imagination to tackle the most pressing issues facing life on Earth – to envision and build a more equitable an sustainable world.