08/09/2026
Dr. Etrit Shkreli, who has been part of the teaching team for “SPS 303 – Law and Ethics” at Sabancı University for many years, will represent Türkiye as a member of the Management Committee (MC) of the new COST Action CA25141 – Futures Literacy for Anticipatory Societies – Strengthening Foresight Systems Across Europe (FLARE). Shkreli actively contributed to the preparation of the Action’s proposal last year and is one of its co-authors.
Approved by the COST Committee of Senior Officials (CSO) in May 2026, FLARE will bring together researchers, educators, policymakers and practitioners from across Europe over a four-year period. The network aims to connect diverse research and practice in the field of Futures Literacy and support the development of shared conceptual, methodological and ethical approaches.
One of FLARE’s starting points is the recognition that the future does not yet exist. We can therefore relate to the future only through expectations, assumptions and images of what might come. People constantly “use the future” for different purposes and in different ways: to plan, prepare, hope, worry, make decisions or imagine what has not yet emerged. These images of the future shape not only how we think about what is to come, but also how we make sense of the present and what we consider possible today.
Futures Literacy refers to the capacity to understand how and why we use the future and to develop the ability to use it in different ways and for different purposes. The aim is not to predict the future more accurately, but to make visible the assumptions through which we anticipate and act under conditions of uncertainty and complexity, and to expand our capacity to explore different possibilities.
An interdisciplinary approach to Futures Literacy
FLARE will bring together Futures Literacy research taking place across different disciplines and contexts in Europe, with the aim of developing shared foundations for research and practice. The Action will also explore how Futures Literacy can be developed and applied in areas such as education, governance and innovation.
The Action is structured around four Working Groups focusing on the theoretical and methodological foundations of Futures Literacy; applied futures research and education; evaluation and impact measurement; and capacity building and the development of new areas of impact.
The network will support different forms of collaboration and learning, including Living Labs, Training Schools and Short-Term Scientific Missions, alongside joint research, open resources and policy-oriented outputs.
Sabancı University and Futures Literacy
Dr. Etrit Shkreli’s contribution to FLARE builds on her academic and educational work at Sabancı University, her work with the Foundations Development Directorate (FDD), and her research and teaching experience in Futures Literacy and future-oriented learning.
Her work explores how people, and particularly students, relate to ideas about the future; how assumptions about the future shape the ways we make sense of the present; and how they influence the options we are able to see as possible. Rather than treating the future as a single predictable outcome, this work focuses on making visible how and why people use the future, and on creating learning spaces in which different ways of thinking and imagining can emerge.
This approach also intersects with Sabancı University’s interdisciplinary educational environment. In educational work with students from different fields, questions about the future are approached as questions that require technology, society, ethics, learning and human behaviour to be considered together.
As a member of the FLARE Management Committee, Shkreli will contribute to bringing research and practice perspectives from Türkiye into the European network and to developing research and practice at the intersection of Futures Literacy, education, governance and innovation.
Further information about COST FLARE is available at COST CA25141 – FLARE.
