Foresight essay contest: the winning submissions
Can you imagine what life at a hybrid university will look like in the year 2040? This was the prompt given to the ETH community in this year’s edition of the Strategic Foresight Hub essay contest. The winning essays have now been unveiled.
In the spring of 2022, the Strategic Foresight Hub (SFH) once again invited the ETH community to join them on a journey to the year 2040. This year’s 2040 Essay Contest asked people to imagine and describe day-to-day life at a hybrid university in the future.
The winning submissions
Of the 16 entries, the SFH team selected four essays and put them up for a public vote. Submissions were rated according to their relevance to the writing prompt, the creativity of the text and the overall readability.
The ETH community selected “DownloadETH Today (PDF, 2.6 MB)” as the audience favourite – an imaginary future newspaper containing multiple articles thought up by the LET Educational Media Team.
In addition to the public favourite, the SFH team selected the essay “DownloadFreedom of Choice (PDF, 1.2 MB)”, written by Linda Grob, a bioinformatics specialist, as the winner. “While the winner of the public vote is noteworthy because of its variety of creative ideas and perspectives, it was Linda Grob’s submission that won us over, particularly because of the skilled storytelling,” says Fiona Könz from the Strategic Foresight Team. “She truly succeeded in writing a story that transports you to everyday life in the year 2040.”
Both of the winning essays were expanded together with the authors and published as a booklet, which is available as a PDF on the Strategic Foresight Hub website.
Additional reading material
If you’re interested in reading more, you can find an overview of all four finalist essays for the public vote here.
The Strategic Foresight Hub runs the 2040 essay contest with the goal of providing insight into how foresight methods can be playfully applied in order to inspire, reflect and think creatively. You can find out more about SFH and its work on the Strategic Foresight Hub website.
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