Friday 4 July 2025, 11am - 3pm
Seminar, Radcliffe Humanities Building
Register via Eventbrite.
This will be a participatory workshop, with lunch included. Please note if you have dietary or accessibility requirements when registering.
In times of turbulence and uncertainty, scenarios - narrative descriptions of contrasting, plausible futures - can provide the basis for strategic dialogue, creative thinking, and judicious decision-making, as well as "interesting research" that is both rigorous and actionable. Although usually associated with the social sciences and industry, building scenarios requires skills closely aligned with the humanities, and offers a fresh perspective on many ambiguous or debatable issues via the systemic "manufactured hindsight" of multiple contrasting futures. Scenario work can also usefully encourage epistemic humility - asking, not "which future do we think we want from the limits of our perspective in the present?", but "how will different potential futures perceive our choices and values in hindsight?".
This highly participatory session will introduce a current scenario set for the future of global healthcare created at Griffith University using a variant of the Oxford Scenario Planning Approach developed at the Saïd Business School. The approach has well-established uses in medicine and healthcare (United European Gastroenterology, 2014; IMAJINE, 2022; Ramírez et. al, 2023; Finch, 2024; Lang and Carson, 2025).
The event offers attendees the opportunity to discuss how medical humanities expertise (such as medical ethics and history) and their wider context may evolve in ways beyond current expectations (Lang and Ramírez (2024)'s so-called "ghost scenario"), as well as learning about Oxford-style scenario planning and exploring how the medical humanities may usefully speak to broader questions of strategy, policy, and foresight across systems of health and care.
Lead Facilitator: Dr Matt Finch, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford
Co-Facilitator: Dr Sarah Dry
Matt Finch is an Associate Fellow of Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford, a member of the Futures Council at Australia's National Security College, and an affiliate of the New School for Social Research. An experienced leader and facilitator of scenario engagements, he served an extended three year term as an adviser to the European cybersecurity agency ENISA, was programme director for the Saïd Business School's pandemic-era scenario work with the WHO-affiliated Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network, and currently serves as an adviser to the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on Future Generations, in which capacity he supported the UK's Ukraine 2040 foresight partnership with the Ukrainian Parliament. A lifelong student of the humanities, his PhD is in Modern Intellectual History.
Sarah Dry is a writer and historian of science who has worked as a facilitator for the Oxford Scenario Planning Programme. She is currently writing on a book on the history of futures thinking for global problems, focussed on the life of Dana Meadows, author of The Limits to Growth. She has written widely in the history of science and medicine, including on global health and epidemic policy, climate science, Isaac Newton’s manuscripts, and the life of Marie Curie. Her research has been supported by the Leverhulme Trust, the US National Endowment for the Humanities and the Economic and Social Research Council. She is currently a trustee of The Oxford Trust.
Medical Humanities Research Hub, TORCH Research Hubs
