The future within us

This talk centres on imaginaries of the future that shape the present governance of universities through metaphors of perpetual crisis. Drawing on a Foucauldian understanding of power, it explores how crisis-oriented futures produce the ideal of the resilient, self-regulating, and compliant subject. Using Danish universities’ strategic development contracts as an example, it shows how institutional priorities are increasingly framed as necessary responses to multiple, overlapping crises—climate, AI, and well-being. Each of these redefines how we relate to nature, to technology, and ultimately to ourselves. The growing emphasis on well-being, resilience, and lifelong learning suggests that crisis is no longer merely around us but also projected from within, positioning the self in relation to predefined visions of the desirable subject. In this way, the desired outcome of education and research is not transformation, but adaptation