Why Time Matters: A Common Human Frame

This week on the podcast we’re time travelling with the fabulous Professor Keri Facer. How we think about the future or futures makes a difference to the decisions we make in schools today, and Keri has been asking critically important questions about educational futures, pasts and presents for the last 20 years, that are still as important today as they were when she published her brilliant 2011 book ‘Learning Futures: Education, Technology and Social Change’.

Prof. Keri Facer is Professor of Educational and Social Futures at the University of Bristol, UK where she leads the British Academy ‘Times of a Just Transition’ Programme, which brings together scholars from 6 continents and 14 disciplines, to explore how temporal assumptions, frames and processes structure the possibility of just transitions. She is also Co-investigator on the ESRC Centre for Sociodigital Futures, where she works on the implications of mixed reality tools for collective imagination. Keri is also Professor of Public Education at Black Mountains College, led by recent podcast guest, Ben Rawlence: https://www.goodimpactlabs.com/podcast/ben-rawlence.

Keri was previously Zennström Professor in Climate Change Leadership at Uppsala University, expert advisory group member of UNESCO’s Futures of Education Commission and Research Director at Futurelab. Keri is collaborating with the poverty charity, the Joseph Rowntree foundation, on their ‘imagination infrastructure’ programme and is Editor-in-Chief of the journal Futures. Keri is also a co-Investigator of Transforming Education for Sustainable Futures: https://tesf.network/ 

In 2026, she is consolidating this work in three landmark publications: 

• Chronoberg: a handbook of creative methods for temporal imagination (with Johannes Stripple); 

• ‘Time & Possibility: A Field Guide’ (with Harriet Hand); and 

• Temporal Justice, a Special Issue for the Journal of Global Social Challenges. 

Keri’s books include ‘Learning Futures: Education, Technology and Social Change’ and ‘Working with Time in Qualitative Research’. She is joint Editor-in-Chief of the Journal ‘Futures’ and she edits the Routledge Book Series on ‘Futures and Anticipation’ with Prof Johan Siebers.

Keri’s personal website: https://kerifacer.wordpress.com/ 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/keri-facer-2a11b62/

https://www.temporalimagination.org/

https://www.conversationsociety.org/home

https://www.jrf.org.uk/imagination-infrastructures/educating-the-ecological-imagination-the-work-of-black-mountains

https://www.routledge.com/Learning-Futures-Education-Technology-and-Social-Change/Facer/p/book/9780415581431