Spring 2026: What I am working on ...

Spring 2026 — I’m living through an exceptionally intense and fertile period. Threads of practice are converging, sometimes unexpectedly, across facilitation, teaching, research, creative work, and slow, unfolding conversations. Not everything fits neatly. Some things are still ripening.

My main assignment is with the King Baudouin Foundation, where I work across organisational, portfolio and programme strategy levels, helping one of Belgium's most significant civic institutions navigate genuine complexity. With the help of a talented intern I have also conducted a futures project centered on the neighbourhood pharmacy in a time of rapid change. 

I am completing a doctoral dissertation at ETH Zürich's Newrope chair, supervised by Freek Persyn and Teresa Galí-Izard. The research develops a practice of imagination as a mode of engaging post-industrial landscapes, specifically the former coal-mining region of Belgian Limburg. It asks how we might relate to what a landscape carries without narrating, healing or redesigning it. Submission is due end of 2025; public defence in spring 2027. A summary of the main line of my research is here. 

I teach in two contexts: a contribution to the International Certified Future Strategist Program led by Kairos Future, and a semester course Landscape and Imagination at the MAS Urban and Territorial Design at ETH Zürich.

Finally, I am developing a set of learning offerings under the name Magin, ranging from technical modules on foresight and systems thinking to more experimental programmes oriented towards imagination, presence and the cultivation of new forms of agency in uncertain times. 

Finally, I continue to serve as an Expert Advisor to the European Public Health Alliance, and as a Trustee at the International Futures Forum. My term as VP at the Executive Committee of the International Federation for Systems Research is slated to end in June 2026.