Summary

Stories have been integral to the human experience for millenia. At Arizona State University, Storying Just Futures (SJF)  is inviting the next generation of students and youth community leaders to “story,” or create/design, just, equitable, and compassionate futures. Reflecting the goals of ASU’s Changing Futures campaign, the project seeks to inspire tomorrow’s changemakers, strengthen community resilience, and reshape humanity’s relationship with the planet.

Funded by Create the Change (CTC), which “focuses on the moral, economic, and cultural challenges to planetary health, Storying Just Futures was originally planned as a project of Humanities for the Environment’s North American Observatory.  Titled “Humanities for Just Energy Transition” or H4JET, the project launched in 2022 and convened ASU’s environmental justice experts from the humanities and social sciences with scientists working with ASU’s Lightworks and the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions (CNCE) on grants shaped by the federal government’s Justice40 framework. Justice40 ensured that 40 percent of the benefits from federal climate and infrastructure investments would reach historically marginalized communities. H4JET contributed to these grants by integrating humanities faculty, methodologies and knowledges into grants focused on decarbonization and community benefits planning. Joni Adamson and Sreya Ann Oommen were leading these efforts.    

When the federal government paused two successful grants in January 2025, Adamson and Oommen began working to “re-story” and retitle their efforts to assist faculty, graduate students and early career faculty whose aspirations and goals were impacted by the dramatic changes in the funding and political landscapes. Their aim was to address the wellbeing of communities–both inside and outside of academia–and to empower new generations of youth to “re-story” and redirect their own efforts on behalf of human and planetary justice and flourishing. They teamed up with energy justice professor Jennifer Richter and gender studies professor Indulata Prasad to explore how they could pivot previous environmental justice goals toward local communities through the Local to Global Justice Festival which has been operating at ASU for 25 years. They also began working with Dr. Eduari Navarro-Perez who co-leads Earth Systems Science for the Anthropocene (ESSA) with Professor Nancy Grimm. ESSA is designed to empower interdisciplinary graduate students focused on environmental approaches. The project is collaborating with Ed Finn and Ruth Wylie at the Center for Science and Imagination whose work in speculative storytelling and design fiction informs SJF’s integration of creative narrative and futures thinking with environmental and social research. 

Storying Just Futures aspires NOT to retreat in the face of challenges. On the contrary, we are spending the year meeting, learning, planning, and co-designing.  A Spring 2026 Convergence will bring all participants together to re-tell, recount, and anticipate our futures anew. We will share what we have achieved over the course of the year as we seek to imagine and create equitable and just futures.  

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Events:

• In its Spring 2025 kickoff meeting, SJF’s creative ethos was shaped by Giovanna Di Chiro’s Spring 2025 keynote, “Re-making ‘Living Worlds’—From the Ground Up,” which emphasized that worldbuilding begins with care, collaboration, and grounded imagination. Non-Federal Grant Writing Workshop (September 12, 2025), co-hosted with ESSA, and led by Indualata Prasad, which introduced participants to funding pathways beyond traditional federal mechanisms—reflecting SJF’s commitment to equitable access and long-term sustainability.
• Lecture, Denise Moreno Ramirez, Assistant Director of The Earth League Secretariat at ASU’s Global Futures Laboratory, brings more than two decades of experience in environmental justice to explore how storytelling, science communication, and global collaboration can shape equitable and sustainable futures. Her talk embodies SJF’s vision that narrative can bridge scholarship and lived experience—transforming how communities imagine and practice change.
• The ESSA Symposium | Imagining, on November 7 will convene sustainability scholars and practitioners to explore intersections of environmental justice and futures thinking
•  Lecture, Professor Joni Adamson (November 14, 2025) “The Philosophy of the Matrix: What We Can Learn About Futures Thinking from the Blockbuster Trilogy.” This lecture invited participants to rethink agency, energy, technology, justice, and futures thinking through the “tool” of speculative  science fiction and film. 
• November 21, Futures Literacy Workshop – Imagining Futures with Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s What if We Get it Right,  using storytelling and worldbuilding as tools for hope, research, and social transformation
• On January 26, 2026, the Climate Justice webinar, “Pursuing Climate Justice in a Climate Crisis,” held with the Learning Planet Institute festival and the Center for Science and Imagination, centered frontline communities and highlighted equity and just transitions. On January 30, 2026 Ed Finn and Joey Eschrich led a “Climate Imagination” session introducing “habits of mind” and presenting A Rewilded Mind as a creative toolkit for climate researchers. Together, these events align with CTC Pillar 1 by using informed dialogue and creative practice to challenge dominant climate narratives, and with Pillar 4 by equipping the next generation of change agents with the tools to lead just and imaginative climate action. Watch Here
• On February 14, 2026, in collaboration with the Local to Global Justice Festival, which SJF co-sponsored, we organized a panel featuring Indulata Prasad, Edauri Navarro-Perez, Joni Adamson, and Sreya Ann Oommen. The event advanced SJF’s mission to equip emerging leaders with the tools and storytelling practices to shape resilient, justice-centered futures, and reflected our vision of youth-driven collective agency by bringing humanities-based environment justice dialogue into a public forum.
• SJF will also announce $200 graduate Storying Just Future awards for 10 grad students for Spring/Summer 2026.
• The SJF Fellowship application closed on February 5, 2026 with the new cohort announced on February 12, 2026. Fellows will draft a normative instrument, such as a manifesto, white paper, or policy recommendation, for UNESCO leadership, culminating in a Spring 2026 Pre-Convergence and Fall 2026 Convergence where the fellows will get training to and present proposals to leaders in environmental justice along with other CTC projects. This structure advances SJF’s mission to equip emerging leaders with storytelling and futures-thinking tools for justice-centered impact, while aligning with CTC Pillar 1 through informed policy dialogue and Pillar 4 by preparing the next generation of change agents for global engagement.