Futures Studies is a powerful tool for managing institutional dynamics and negotiating periods of change. It seeks to empower you to identify and engage with the forces that shape your operational and working contexts. It has strategic value to anyone working in business and government where change is rapid and creative open-ended thinking a necessary tool for negotiating turbulence and rapid change. It is therefore a vehicle that develops personal and social adaptive capacity, and can contribute substantially to social and economic wellbeing.

The Graduate Certificate in Futures Studies provides you with a sound foundational knowledge of the futures field. It introduces a range of futures methods, concepts and tools designed to help you better understand your working context and future proof your organisation. The program hones leadership skills, covers a wide range of facilitation techniques, links personal and organisational values to actions and their outcomes, and stimulates creative engagement that generates a range of alternatives to business as usual for you and your organisation.

Futures Studies is therefore about the present. The present reinvented in the light of probable, possible, and preferable futures that may occur as a result of social, technological, environmental, economic or cultural change. It hinges on flexibility of thinking, the ability to reframe context and critically assess our role in its maintenance, and to identify points of leverage that, when addressed, can lead to new possibilities. It is increasingly becoming a frame of reference for government, business, education and community development. The core business of all such sectors is an ability to manage change, anticipate, and align strategy with desired outcomes.

This program fosters strategic foresight, which is of key relevance to emerging issues facing our region and the planet. It draws on the innate capacity of the human mind to engage in foresight or futures thinking. You learn to clarify values and develop effective strategic processes to navigate a turbulent environment where success and failure impact on both present and future generations. Courses blend academic and action-based learning to bridge the divide between theory and practice. All courses are offered in both face-to-face on campus or fully external (online) modes; with the exception of FUT700 Applied Futures Studies: Methods, Values and Strategy, which is only available online.

Admission requirements

A student entering the Graduate Certificate program will normally be required to hold an undergraduate degree, or equivalent, from a recognised higher education institution.