Next Era is a futurist media project exploring the alternative future ideas, innovations, and communities working on solutions to our crucial 21st century challenges. We aim to move our societal discourses from analysing problems to imagining brighter alternative futures for our generation.
Founded in 2022 by a group of postgrads at the University of Oxford, we strive to create a voice of optimism in our time of societal uncertainty and instability, and help imagine and understand the potential pathways towards a brighter tomorrow.
Aside from our digital magazine, we also explore other avenues through which we can engage a broader audience in reimagining and building our future. Our current portfolio includes future imagination and discussion events with our local communities, research work, as well as the development of online audience engagement tools.
The launch of our publication was funded by the David Rhys Award, Bowers Award, and Development Fund at Jesus College, Oxford.
Team
Our current team is based in Berlin, led by Nour Attalla and Robert Manschke.
Members of the Next Era community
Nour Attalla, Editor: Articles / Profile
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Mitsuo Iwamoto, Development: Profile
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Kassandra Dugi, Writer: Articles / Profile
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Otto Barenberg: Profile
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Daniel Fang, Development: Profile
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Tabitha Taberer, Writer: Articles / Profile
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Kalyan Wessendorp, Writer: Articles / Profile
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Marie Vanolli, Writer: Articles / Profile
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Alex Collins, Writer: Articles / Profile
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Ella Davidson, Writer: Articles / Profile
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Stijn Willemse, Writer: Articles / Profile
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Nikhita Swarnkar, Writer: Profile
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Lukas Salecker, Writer: Articles / Profile
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Robert Manschke, Development: Profile
Advisors
Aleksi Neuvonen
Dr Aleksi Neuvonen is the founder of Finnish think tank Demos Helsinki, working together with the public sector, private sector, and NGOs. A futures researcher, he studies change and un-change of societies.
Aleksi is board member of the Crisis Management Initiative of Nobel laureate and former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari and the ecological retail chain Ruohonjuuri. He holds a Master’s degree in Philosophy, Ecology, and Social Psychology from the University of Helsinki, and a PhD in Urban, Community, and Regional Planning from Tampere and Radboud Universities.
Isatou Bokum
Isatou M. Bokum is the founder of the Girls Talk, a Gambian NGO addressing the cultural norms hindering girls’ growth and wellbeing.
As the first Mandela Rhodes Scholar and Rhodes Scholar from The Gambia, Isatou holds a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism from the University of The Gambia, an honours degree in Media Theory and Practice from the University of Cape Town, and a master’s degree in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Oxford. She is now pursuing a second master’s degree in public policy to shape intersectional policies for social and economic gender justice in Africa.
Karoline Kan – 阚超群
Karoline Kan is a Chinese author and journalist. Her book Under Red Skies was published in 2019 in English and has been translated into Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. She was the climate reporter at Bloomberg Green from 2020 to 2022. Before joining Bloomberg, she worked at China Dialogue as Beijing editor for environment and climate stories. She has previously worked at The New York Times, Radio France International and That’s Beijing magazine.
In 2019 and 2020, her writing won The Honorable Mention by The Society of Publishers in Asia Awards (SOPA) of reporting on Arts & Culture; in 2022, her investigative reporting on Chinese state-owned companies’ carbon emissions was shortlisted in SOPAwards for Excellence in Reporting on the Environment. Kan holds an MSc in Sociology from the University of Oxford.
We strongly welcome the submission of article pitches at Next Era.
Our articles focus on future-oriented insights into the world around us. Whether through studying a specific event, group or phenomenon, or a broader societal structure, Next Era articles contextualise the topic they are studying and outline its broader implications for our human, societal or material futures.
Published articles are typically between 500 – 800 words long.