From 21 to 24 October 2025, Mexico City was transformed into a laboratory of ideas about time and the future. During those days, the Inaugural Conference of the International Research Training Group ‘Temporalities of Future’ was held, a meeting that brought together researchers from Mexico and Germany interested in exploring how societies imagine, live and transform their temporalities. More than just an academic event, it was the beginning of a collective thinking network that seeks to connect disciplines, generations and cultural contexts to understand the future from the present and the past.

This conference in Mexico is the result of academic collaboration established for over more than two decades between El Colegio de México (COLMEX), Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS), Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and three German institutions: Freie Universität Berlin, the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the Universität Potsdam. This German Mexican alliance proposes an interdisciplinary dialogue between the global North and South that transcends national and academic boundaries in order to think of time as a central dimension of social, historical and political life.

The encounter took place at three emblematic locations: the Faculty of Economics of the UNAM, the Casa Chata of CIESAS, and the Alfonso Reyes Hall of El Colegio de México. Over the course of four days, more than forty speakers —including doctoral students, researchers, and guest scholars— shared reflections, research findings, and new questions about the multiple ways in which temporalities traverse the human experience. 

The opening ceremony at the UNAM Faculty of Economics brought together leading figures from the academic world, including Leonardo Lomelí, Rector of the UNAM; Ana Covarrubias, President of El Colegio de México; Carlos Macías Richard, Director General of CIESAS; Violeta Vázquez-Rojas, undersecretary of SECIHTI; Stefan Rinke, from Freie Universität Berlin; and Jean-François Prud’homme, from the Centro de Estudios Internacionales of the COLMEX. In their speeches, they agreed on the importance of the project as an academic bridge between Mexico and Germany, designed to critically reflect on different social challenges.

Historian Guillermo Zermeño (COLMEX) opened the programme with a keynote lecture titled ‘Historiography, Temporality and Historical Knowledge,’ in which he proposed rethinking the way historical knowledge organises the relationships between past, present and future. His presentation set the tone for the debates that would unfold throughout the week, in which time was understood not as a uniform line, but as a web of experiences, tensions and anticipations.

The thematic sessions offered a sample of the diversity and conceptual richness of the programme. Under the heading ‘Economy and aspirations’, phenomena such as the destruction of social time in the platform economy and the history of Latin American feminist economics were analysed, with special attention to the inequalities that arise in digital work and in the region's economic policies. In the block "Temporalities of the actors," participants addressed experiences related to gender and education, highlighting research on desire and corporeality in contexts of intersexuality, the social organisation of care, indigenous education, and the aspirations of young people in different Latin American territories.

The discussion continued with round tables dedicated to ‘Temporality and Space’, which explored migration and displacement as experiences that transform notions of home and belonging. These sessions presented studies on care in migratory contexts between Latin America and Germany, as well as analyses of the impacts of forced migration in Central America and Mexico. Another set of panels, grouped under the theme ‘Aspirations and the Future of Politics,’ delved into the ways in which political horizons are projected into the future, from the memory of truth commissions to resistance against extractive models and ecological crises.

Three new publications were presented at the conference: Variedades de Capitalismos: del fin del auge de las materias primas a la pandemia, edited by Ilan Bizberg; Temporalidades del futuro: lo colonial, lo posible y lo politico, Vol. I y II, coordinated by Bernd Hausberger, Ricardo Pérez Montfort, Stefan Rinke and Claudia Carolina Zamorano Villarreal, and the monograph Insurrección, Anarquía, Revolución: Una Anatomía Política del Instante by Humberto Beck of El Colegio de México. The works were discussed by researchers from both Mexico and Germany, and raised new questions about how economic history, colonial legacies and social expectations shape contemporary temporalities.

In addition to the academic presentations, the programme included a space for dialogue between students and young researchers linked to the Research Group, who shared their learning experiences and the lessons drawn from working together among institutions and academic cultures. This exchange was one of the most enriching moments of the gathering, as it highlighted the transnational nature of the project and its commitment to training new generations of researchers with a pluralistic view of time and its meanings.

The closing of the conference, held in the Alfonso Reyes Hall at COLMEX, took place in an atmosphere of enthusiasm and commitment. The institutional representatives agreed on the need to consolidate this space as an international benchmark for reflection on time and the future from Latin America. The event concluded with a planning meeting between the members of the IRTG, where the next activities and joint lines of research were outlined.

Beyond its academic dimension, ‘Temporalities of Future’ was an invitation to collectively imagine other ways of inhabiting time. Between lectures, debates, and informal conversations, a network of intellectual exchange was woven that will continue to grow in the coming years. This meeting not only marked the beginning of the final phase of this binational cooperation programme, but also consolidated the foundations of a community dedicated to rethinking possible futures —those that are desired, uncertain, or even unimaginable— from the social, historical, and cultural realities of our present.

Here you can find some pictures from the conference.