Imagining Futures is a four-day conference taking place from August 1–4 at Habib University, Karachi. Designed as more than just a formal gathering, it aims to bridge the gap between research, policy, and action to address South Asia’s pressing social challenges. Submit your application now and be part of the movement shaping a better future.

August 1-4, 2025

Habib University

Venue

Conference Dates

April 10, 2025

Submission Deadline

Habib University

Habib University is dedicated to shaping the futures of its students by offering a rigorous, contextually relevant, and engaging liberal arts and sciences education. Guided by its mission, the University provides opportunities for the most talented students, regardless of their financial capacity or social background, empowering them to enrich their lives, build their futures, and become leaders who contribute meaningfully to improving their country and the world.

A key area of focus for the university is to develop a vibrant research culture rooted in collaboration between students and faculty. Undergraduate students are actively engaged in scholarly activities,

gaining essential skills for lifelong learning. This early exposure equips them to navigate their final year projects, make informed career decisions, and pursue graduate studies. By embedding research practices within its curriculum, the University ensures that students are not only adept at conducting research but also capable of solving problems and developing sustainable, impactful solutions for real-world challenges.

The University’s research efforts are also closely tied to pedagogy, with faculty encouraged to translate their work into courses, seminars, and conference papers. Additionally, Habib University values collaborative scholarship, fostering partnerships with other institutions and engaging with the global academic community. This dynamic research environment enriches the educational experience, preparing both students and faculty to tackle pressing challenges and contribute meaningfully to society. Habib University values research of all types but prioritizes research that is relevant to the issues and challenges of the national and regional context in which it operates and research studies that employ Habib University’s undergraduate students.

The Imagining Futures conference is an effort to promote this mission. The conference will bring together the relevant stakeholders to focus on local issues, leverage research for evidence-based policymaking, and to develop a research agenda for future collaborative work.

Conference Background

South Asia is home to over a quarter of the world’s population. It faces persistent challenges related to gender inequality, social exclusion, and economic vulnerability (Asian Development Bank, 2023). While the region has witnessed economic growth in the recent past, it remains deeply divided along gender, caste, ethnicity, ability, and income lines, leading to systemic barriers that limit access to education, healthcare, and employment opportunities. Women, ethnic minorities, and other marginalized communities continue to experience exclusion from decision-making processes, often facing discrimination reinforced by entrenched social norms.

Additionally, geographic disparities further exacerbate inequalities, with rural and remote populations having limited access to essential services and infrastructure. These challenges are compounded by the intensifying climate crisis, which disproportionately affects vulnerable communities through extreme weather events, food insecurity, and displacement (Siddiqui, 2023). Frequent floods, droughts, and rising temperatures threaten agricultural productivity and access to clean water, worsening existing socioeconomic inequalities.

Pakistan, similarly, faces a variety of challenges across all sectors of development. A large segment of the population is living under the poverty line (World Bank, 2024). Weak governance structures and political instability significantly impact macroeconomic stability across the country. Additionally, it struggles across all social sectors, including health, education, utility provision, transport and urban infrastructure, as well as law and order. Pakistan is also one of the most vulnerable regions to climate change (UN Habitat, 2023), despite contributing minimally to global carbon emissions.

Unfortunately, much of Pakistan remains stuck in a cycle of political, economic, and social challenges, with rising citizen apathy leading to declining civic participation. While numerous projects and initiatives across all sectors have been rolled out by governments, international agencies, or local organizations, most remain unstructured and ad hoc. A systematic and systemic overhaul may be necessary to bring about meaningful and lasting social change.

It is against this backdrop that the Imagining Futures conference is conceptualized. It is envisioned as a conference in the broadest possible scope, emulating a movement that exists beyond the limits of a formal gathering. The goal is to establish a forum where all relevant stakeholders can come together and work towards a better future.

There is a great deal of academic research being conducted on social issues and inequalities worldwide, yet its application and coherence remain limited in developing countries across South Asia. Much of this research is also restricted by paywalls or institutional barriers, limiting access beyond the academy. At the same time, various interventions led by governments and development sector organizations are often neither grounded in empirical evidence nor evaluated through rigorous research. Many of these projects, despite receiving multi-million-dollar funding through loans or grants, remain small-scale pilots that are never scaled up and are frequently duplicated due to a lack of structured planning.

A critical aim of the Imagining Futures conference is to promote evidence-based policymaking rooted in structured planning and empirical research, with built-in mechanisms for continuous evaluation and adaptation. To this effect, the conference seeks to bring together stakeholders from academia, international development agencies, local development partners, bureaucrats, politicians, and students to engage in critical conversations and build a network that can outlast the conference—transforming into a movement that supports a shared mission.

Imagining Futures 2025

The inaugural Imagining Futures conference seeks to explore localised and action-oriented solutions to systemic social equity issues in South Asia. The future is defined as the next 1-3 years so that the discourse is anchored and actionable as opposed to being overly aspirational and theoretical. The goal of the conference is to deconstruct the issues, better understand the nuances, explore possible solutions, and make a plan of action.

Hence, there is a lot of emphasis on localized and action-oriented approaches. The conference will bring together the relevant stakeholders which enables constructive dialogue and paves a path for taking action. A key goal will be to make these connections across the sectors so that subsequent work becomes easier to execute.

The focus may be on any level of the system: local, city, district, region, national, or international. The goal is to promote action research and evidence-based policymaking, and small pilots have a lot of potential in creating larger impact. Therefore, the conference will also serve as a starting point to discuss these issues and to develop a research agenda for the next year.

For the inaugural edition of the conference, the agenda is broadly defined around social equity.

Conference Format

Plenary Sessions

Experienced researchers and experts will be invited to address relevant broader issues, discuss current best practices, and map the direction of future research.

Thematic Panels 

Researchers are invited to present findings from their ongoing or completed projects to apprise the audience of current research, as well as to gain feedback on the project or research methodology. Thematic panels will be formed to allow for engaging conversation and pertinent feedback.

Intervention Showcase

Field interventions by the government, development agencies, and researchers will be showcased through an exhibition to promote collaboration. Students will be encouraged to explore these projects to find areas of interest. Additionally, projects will also be connected with relevant academic experts to further enrich the interventions and to potentially conduct empirical research into their effectiveness.

Poster Presentations

Students are invited to submit their projects for poster presentations. This will provide them with an opportunity to refine their skills, gain feedback from experts, and to develop a professional network with peers and seniors in their chosen fields.

Submission Guidelines

Extended Abstract

A summary of ongoing or concluded research focusing on the research questions, methodology, data, and (preliminary) findings.

Full Paper

Project Brief

Draft papers showcasing completed research which have not yet been submitted for publication are invited for presentation and feedback in the conference.

A detailed summary of the intervention or project being implemented, focusing on the project goals, implementation methodology, timelines, and built-in evaluation mechanisms (if any).