Aldous Huxley Future Forum

Aldous Huxley, a leading modern writer, socially critical visionary and member of the Academy of Sciences and Literature | Mainz, is the inspiration behind the Aldous Huxley Future Forum. It is the Academy’s central platform for interdisciplinary engagement with social, technological and ethical questions concerning the future (evolving from the series “Future Questions of Society”). As a strategic instrument of deliberative policy advice, it brings together discussions without formulating normative guidelines, and focuses on structured classification and public deliberation. The approach, which is open to all classes and the Young Academy, brings together researchers, cultural practitioners, thought leaders and decision-makers; thematically, the spectrum ranges from AI and bioethics to migration, education, freedom, and control.

Interdisciplinary perspective
A key feature of the forum is its interdisciplinary approach: it brings together academia, literature and music, thereby shedding light on the ethical, technological, social and cultural dimensions of complex issues. Furthermore, literary and musical imagination opens up new horizons of understanding that go beyond purely analytical knowledge and systematically take cultural, aesthetic and ethical aspects into account.

Cross-class analysis
What makes the Aldous Huxley Future Forum unique is that social issues are now addressed comprehensively and across different year groups. This is based on the view that none of the major social questions can be satisfactorily answered from the perspective of just one year group, let alone a single discipline. Whilst previous events were organised by individual classes, the Future Forum, for the first time, facilitates an institutionally embedded diversity of perspectives from the natural sciences, humanities and social sciences, as well as literature and music. This enables social challenges to be analysed in all their breadth, depth and ambivalence.

Structural protection and committee
To provide a structural framework for this approach, a cross-class academy committee entitled ”Future Issues in Society“ has been established, bringing together representatives from all classes of the Academy, members of the Young Academy, and external experts where necessary. Chaired by the President, the committee coordinates strategic thematic management, ensures interdisciplinarity, oversees the quality of policy advisory activities, and determines the specific format of the respective event initiatives.

Policy advice and social impact
This form of policy advice is delivered through high-profile symposia, complementary events and curated outputs that are closely integrated with the Academy’s existing communication structures. They help to bring the findings into the public debate in a way that is visible, understandable and strategically effective.