Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) is seeking your insights to help identify the next key future challenges on which to focus knowledge mobilization efforts, as part of the Imagining Canada’s Future initiative.
Society is looking to the social sciences and humanities to help understand and mitigate global challenges in the face of accelerated change. SSHRC’s Imagining Canada’s Future initiative mobilizes social sciences and humanities research to address emerging and future challenges impacting Canada that may guide decision-making across all sectors towards a better future.
In 2018, SSHRC, in partnership with Policy Horizons Canada, engaged with leaders across academic, government, business and community sectors as part of a foresight exercise to identify key emerging societal issues facing Canadians. This horizon scan resulted in the identification of16 future global challenges . Three of the challenges were the focus of knowledge mobilization efforts, including the funding of knowledge synthesis grants: Living Within the Earth’s Carrying Capacity , Working in the Digital Economy and the Emerging Asocial Society (KSG competition to launch in fall 2021).
The 16 future global challenges raise the possibility of opportunities and new directions for societies as well as warnings of potential crises. Each challenge is multi-disciplinary in nature and requires broad cooperation to solve. Many emerge from technological innovations. The point at which each challenge may become pressing varies, but all of the challenge themes would benefit from proactive, transdisciplinary exploration and discussion.
SSHRC is now looking ahead to identify three additional future challenge areas to be the focus of future programming and/or corporate activities between 2022 and 2025. Five future global challenges have been identified through the first stage of our engagement activities as being particularly important and impactful to Canadians. In the following survey, you are invited to prioritize these future global challenges. You also have the opportunity to select additional challenges from the Horizon scan, as well as to add any new challenges that you believe require attention. Completing this survey should take about ten minutes. Responses are anonymous and will be aggregated to ensure anonymity.
Survey closes Friday, July 23, 2021
Further information on the Future Challenge Areas is available on the SSHRC website .
Take the Imagining Canada's Future - Engagement on Future Challenges Survey