At the DU Faculty Fulbright Series event “Teaching in Serbia”, Keith Gehring described five months spent teaching policy strategy in Belgrade while his students were actively contesting their country’s direction. As a Fulbright scholar at the University of Belgrade’s Faculty of Political Sciences, he asked them to use International Futures (IFs), Pardee’s open-source, integrated assessment model, to look past the protests to a harder question: If their movement succeeded, what Serbia would they inherit? 

Gehring is a teaching associate professor at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of Global and Public Affairs and a faculty affiliate of the Pardee Institute for International Futures. 

From a research question to a student movement 

Gehring explained that his Fulbright proposal, “Serbia at the Crossroads: Modeling Political and Economic Futures,” submitted in September 2024, grew from a question he had pursued for years: How could Serbia’s educated, politically engaged population coexist with persistent corruption and weak government effectiveness? 

About six weeks later, a railway station canopy collapsed in Novi Sad, killing 16 people. The tragedy sparked a student-led movement demanding government accountability. During his Fulbright interview, he recalled, embassy interviewers told him, “we wish you were here right now.” By the time he arrived in March 2026, students had occupied university buildings and mass demonstrations had filled Belgrade’s streets. His own classroom had recently housed students during the blockades. 

"What if you win?” 

When students doubted that political change would come, Gehring asked them, “what if you win?” Using IFs, they examined the economic, demographic, and political challenges a new government would face, and how it might choose among competing priorities. 

Demography made those choices tangible. Students understood their country’s politics, Gehring said, but seeing the potential scale of population decline brought new pressures into focus. A smaller, younger generation would have to support an aging population, which raised questions about public spending and about sustaining opportunities for young people. Governance presented a different kind of challenge. Students could model stronger institutions, but Gehring noted that political change alone would not remove entrenched corruption. Building effective institutions would take sustained work. The classroom discussions weighed students’ ambitions against those structural realities, with decisions that reach beyond the next three to five years to the next 30 to 50. 

An electoral breakthrough, with questions still open 

By the time of his Fulbright Series talk, the movement had achieved an electoral breakthrough. In Gehring’s account, the student-backed list won roughly 140 of 250 seats in Serbia’s assembly. He expressed admiration for the movement and noted that questions about its governing priorities and cohesion remain open. 

Gehring closed by encouraging faculty, students, and administrators in attendance to consider Fulbright opportunities.

When shipping through the Strait of Hormuz slows, the effects don't stay in the Persian Gulf. At the Pardee Institute’s October 29 Lunch and Learn, Director of Research Development Taylor Hanna and Director Jonathan Moyer shared early research, conducted in collaboration with UN Women, that traces how higher fuel and fertilizer costs could affect households thousands of miles away. 

Using International Futures (IFs), Pardee’s open-source, integrated assessment model, the team compared a pre-conflict baseline with a shorter war ending in 2026 and a longer war lasting through 2028. Because IFs links energy, agriculture, the economy, and human development in one model, the team could follow the war’s effects from one system to the next. For example, the scenarios examined how disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz could raise fuel costs and constrain fertilizer supplies, reducing crop production and making food less affordable. 

The presentation showed how those effects could extend far from the region, including to countries in Central and Southern Asia that depend on Gulf fuel and fertilizer. The effects also differ for women and men. Using IFs to examine these differences, the team’s preliminary results suggest a larger increase in food insecurity among women than men, with effects persisting beyond the fighting. In the scenarios presented, a longer conflict could compound the hardship. 

A lively discussion followed, with attendees raising several questions about the findings. One asked why the effects in Africa appeared smaller than in South Asia. In the scenarios, the answer is exposure: South Asia relies heavily on Gulf fuel and fertilizer, while lower chemical fertilizer use across much of Sub-Saharan Africa softens the hit to harvests. Others noted how useful this kind of analysis could be for understanding the war’s reach beyond the region. 

The regional comparison illustrates why distance from the fighting alone does not determine exposure. Dependence on imported fuel and fertilizer can transmit disruptions across borders, while differences in agricultural production and economic conditions shape how those disruptions affect households. 

The findings remain preliminary. For readers interested in learning how to use IFs to develop and compare scenarios, visit Learn IFs to learn about our online course series. Watch for future Lunch and Learn events connecting the Korbel community with Pardee’s research and its policy applications. 

Pardee Institute Director Jonathan Moyer joined think tank leaders, policymakers, and scholars in Strasbourg, France, to discuss how countries turn economic size and military strength into influence. The closed-door Global Dialogue on Power was convened by the European think tank EuropaNova as part of the Europa Power Conference.French Minister Delegate for Europe Benjamin Haddad and EuropaNova President Guillaume Klossa opened the dialogue at the Hôtel de Région Grand Est, with sessions chaired by former European Commissioner António Vitorino. 

In discussions on systemic rivalry, technology, and collaborative governance, Moyer drew on International Futures (IFs) and Pardee’s Diplometrics research, including the Global Power Index and Formal Bilateral Influence Capacity Index. These indices offer complementary perspectives on countries’ material capabilities and the relationships through which they may exercise influence. Moyer used them to examine how shifts in both could shape competition, cooperation, and countries’ capacity to act in the decades ahead.

Artificial intelligence depends on more than advances in software. Its expansion requires energy, data centers, semiconductors, and financing. Whether its productivity gains translate into better jobs and wider economic opportunity also depends on investments in people and choices about how institutions respond. 

Those relationships were central to two Opportunity Labs that Pardee Institute Director Jonathan Moyer helped facilitate at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting of Global Future Leaders, held Oct. 13–15 in Dubai. The meeting brought emerging leaders together with policymakers, researchers, entrepreneurs, and other practitioners to explore opportunities and risks across technology, economic growth, and other areas of global change. 

Moyer participated through WEF’s Global Foresight Network, which he joined earlier this year. The labs used backcasting: participants began with a desired outcome for the coming decade, then worked backward to identify decisions, partnerships, and actions that could help bring it about. The exercises asked what businesses, governments, and marginalized communities would need to do to shape AI’s development and use. 

In the AI infrastructure lab, Moyer moderated a discussion examining the physical and economic foundations behind the technology, including energy networks, cloud computing, and capital. Participants considered the investment, partnerships, and governance needed to make that infrastructure more reliable, inclusive, and sustainable. A second lab focused on the impact of AI on productivity and jobs, looking at how skills investment, labor markets, and public policy could help translate AI-driven gains into broader economic opportunity. Emirates News Agency’s coverage describes both sessions. 

Beyond the labs, Moyer visited UAE government facilities and met with representatives of the prime minister’s office in a meeting facilitated by Pardee Founding Director Barry Hughes. Those encounters offered a closer view of efforts to incorporate AI into government operations and decision-making. At a water and electricity facility, officials described changes in employees’ work as AI became embedded in their processes. 

The meeting with the prime minister’s office opened a related discussion about different ways models inform policy. Moyer and officials reviewed the benefits and limitations of inductive approaches, which infer patterns from data, and deductive approaches, which work from specified relationships and assumptions. They also discussed International Futures (IFs), Pardee’s integrated modeling system for exploring longer-term change across human, social, and natural systems.

Africa’s population is growing as Europe’s ages. But demographic growth alone does not determine who gains economic strength or a greater say in international affairs. Investment in people, relationships between countries, and the ability to act collectively help shape how those changes translate into influence.  

This October, Pardee Institute colleagues Collin Meisel, director of analysis, and Taylor Hanna, director of research development, brought those questions to the 2026 African Futures Conference and related activities with the Institute for Security Studies (ISS). Held Oct. 13–14 in Pretoria and online, the conference brought together researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and others under the theme “From Data to Decisions” to examine Africa’s possible futures and the choices that could shape them.  

The visit built on more than 15 years of collaboration in which ISS and the Pardee Institute have used the International Futures (IFs) platform to examine Africa’s development pathways and compare alternative scenarios. 

Meisel chaired the conference session on security, geopolitics, and regional stability and presented on what a changing international order could mean for Africa. His related research with ISS examines the building blocks of power (economic, demographic, technological, and military capabilities) and how they could shift through the midcentury. The analysis points to growing capabilities among African countries, while showing that population growth must translate into productivity and geopolitical leverage to expand their international influence. It also highlights a parallel challenge for Europe: its collective resources carry different weights depending on whether its countries act together. 

Those questions also framed the Future of African-European Relations project, which Pardee supported through ISS. The visit marked the project’s capstone, with Meisel joining a delegation involving the Hanns Seidel Foundation and German think tanks for meetings and research discussions. His contributions included analyses of America’s demographic future and Africa and Europe’s positions in a changing global order. These examine how choices about migration, trade, and cooperation could alter countries’ future power and relationships. 

At the conference, Hanna led a Futures Lab, “From Current Path to Policy Choices,” as part of the program on making decisions under uncertainty. The session introduced participants to using IFs in practice by changing assumptions and comparing scenarios to see how different choices could affect outcomes across interacting human, social, and natural systems. 

Following the conference, Hanna spent two days in meetings and training with ISS’s African Futures and Innovation team. She also shared Pardee’s Strategic Forecasting with IFs training program during the visit. Some participants have since enrolled and begun working through it to build their ability to run these analyses themselves. 

Can we actually predict the future?

The short answer is no—but there are lots of useful tools to understand which future conditions and events are more or less certain.

This one-day sprint course, presented by Pardee Institute Director and Korbel Associate Professor Dr. Jonathan D. Moyer equips students with knowledge and tools to navigate between probable continuity and deep uncertainty. Students explore why long-term demographic shifts are knowable decades in advance, while events like financial panics and civil conflicts are much more difficult to foresee.

Working with systems tools and scenario methods, participants unpack their own intuitive mental models, map feedback loops, and analyze how different policy decisions can impact long-term trends in violence, economic prosperity, human wellbeing, and environmental crisis. The course replaces naive crystal-ball predictions with actionable frameworks to evaluate policy tradeoffs, design resilient interventions, and navigate a world where knowledge is always incomplete. Students will gain knowledge and skills relevant to future careers in public policy, international affairs, business, and non-profits.

Lunch provided. To register, please email Mayumi Beckelheimer, Director of Undergraduate Programs, at [email protected].

 

New tools for global development, from crop forecasting to digital aid distribution, promise to reach people faster and at lower cost. Many work in a pilot phase. The harder test comes at deployment, when a tool meets the institutions, markets, and daily lives it is built to serve. 

Taylor Hanna, Director of Research Development at the University of Denver's Pardee Institute for International Futures, took up that question as a panelist at "Tech for Good: How Startups Are Rewriting the Rules of Global Development." The United Nations Association (UNA) of Boulder hosted the Colorado Startup Week event. 

 Key takeaways 

Hanna argued that the benefits of AI and other technologies depend on the systems into which they are introduced. Drawing on Pardee’s forecasting work with International Futures (IFs), she noted that while AI's trajectory remains uncertain, the systems it will interact with, such as demographics, education, infrastructure, and governance, follow more established patterns and offer a firmer basis for exploring its potential impacts. Infrastructure, human capital, institutions, and a society’s capacity to adapt, she said, help determine whether innovation leads to broad-based development gains. 

Fellow panelists Juan Lucena of Colorado School of Mines, Gavin Power of PIMCO, and Vivek Ramavajjala of Google brought perspectives from engineering, investment, and technology. Power traced the evolution of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) and impact investing, and Ramavajjala stressed designing AI applications around local contexts and user needs. Across the discussion, panelists returned to human-centered design and collaboration across academia, business, and technology. Hanna also emphasized connecting Colorado’s innovation ecosystem with international organizations, governments, and local partners so that new technologies respond to real-world development challenges. 

Early results from a global survey suggest a disconnect between the socioeconomic scenarios researchers commonly use, and those respondents consider most reflective of today’s world. 

Climate and development researchers lean heavily on a small set of scenarios to explore the decades ahead. Early results from a global survey suggest that many people who build and use those scenarios see today's world reflected in different ones. 

Pardee Institute Director Jonathan Moyer shared those results at the 2026 Bath Conference on Earth System Governance, held September 7–11 at the University of Bath in England with the Earth System Governance Project. His presentation, "How might global socio-ecological change scenarios break out of silos?," was co-authored with Vanessa Schweizer (University of Waterloo), Bas van Ruijven (IIASA - International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis), and Ethan Sullivan (University of Denver). 

The Scenario Evolution Process 

The findings come from the Scenario Evolution Process (SEP), a global, community-led initiative to evaluate and update the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs). Widely used in climate research, the SSPs describe alternative ways societies and economies could evolve this century. Pardee's role in the SEP is both technical and convening. The Institute hosts the SEP website, co-chairs its Orchestration Working Group, and leads the global survey, which gathers input from people who produce scenarios and people who use scenario-based information in research and decision-making. 

What the survey found

Moyer’s presentation identified limits in the current SSP framework, including outdated baselines that assume no new climate policies and limited attention to how environmental change and inequality can feed back into social and economic pathways.

Initial survey results point to a gap between practice and perception. Respondents viewed the pathways characterized by regional rivalry (SSP3) and deepening inequality (SSP4) the most plausible descriptions of today’s world. Researchers, meanwhile, continue to rely heavily on the sustainability-focused (SSP1) and “middle of the road” (SSP2) pathways. And 60.2% of respondents said the SSPs’ traditional framework for comparing the challenges of cutting emissions and adapting to climate impacts is no longer sufficient for their work.

These initial findings reflect respondents’ judgments, rather than a forecast of the world’s direction. They raise questions about how researchers select scenarios and whether the existing framework captures the conditions and questions users need to examine.

Three priorities for the next generation

Moyer outlined three priorities: pathways linked to 2035 and 2050 milestones; greater attention to environmental conditions and inequalities; and scenario development that incorporates regional and national perspectives, including priorities from the Global South.

Get involved

Learn more about the Scenario Evolution Process and follow upcoming survey results at the SEP website.

During a five-month Fulbright residency in Belgrade, Keith Gehring worked with students to examine how Serbia’s policy choices could shape its future, using International Futures (IFs). 

Gehring, a teaching associate professor at the University of Denver's Josef Korbel School of Global and Public Affairs and a faculty affiliate of the Pardee Institute for International Futures, spent his Fulbright residency at the University of Belgrade's Faculty of Political Science. His project, "Serbia at the Crossroads," brought him together with resident academics, students, and members of the wider community to examine Serbia's political landscape: how a society shaped by conflict approaches governance, and which alternative futures remain open to it. 

The interest runs deep. Gehring first traveled to the region years ago, and it stayed with him. "The world moved on, and I never did," he told DU News before his departure.

Forecasting as a way into the conversation 

IFs, Pardee's open-source, integrated forecasting platform, loomed large in Gehring’s teachings. IFs connects demographics, economics, education, governance, energy, and other systems for 188 countries, allowing students to examine how a change in one area carries through to the others over time. In the classroom, students used IFs to examine assumptions about their own country, build scenarios, and trace plausible pathways. 

During one lesson, a student modeled a Serbia that prioritized security as regional threats rose, shifting investment away from research and economic development. In that scenario, slower economic growth eventually constrained the country’s capacity to sustain its security spending. The exercise gave students a concrete trade-off to examine how an immediate response to insecurity could affect the resources available for security over time. 

Beyond the classroom

Gehring also came to know Serbia outside the lecture hall. In the first video of a Korbel series from his time abroad, he speaks with a Serbian resident about culture, politics, and daily life today. In another installment, he walks through Belgrade's graffiti and street art, where cultural identity, political expression, and the city's history sit in plain view on its walls. 

Those encounters connect back to Gehring’s forecasting work, grounded in historical data and stated assumptions. Conversations with the people who live with a country's choices help anchor assumptions and directions in lived experience. 

What comes next

During his residency, Gehring taught IFs workshops and delivered curriculum at the University of Belgrade. Other academic units have since asked him to present, and he will lead those sessions when he returns to Belgrade in November.

Frontier AI models, the most advanced general-purpose models available, are improving quickly. For experts working to prevent cybercrime, that pace creates a planning problem: How do you prepare for capabilities and criminal uses that are not yet widespread?  

Pardee Institute Director Jonathan Moyer joined a World Economic Forum (WEF) virtual workshop on August 27 that took up that question. The session was convened by the Partnership against Cybercrime, an initiative of WEF's Centre for Cybersecurity, as part of its working group "Understanding the influence of frontier AI models on cybercrime." 

A working group looking ahead 

The working group, which launched in July, examines how frontier AI models could change cybercrime, including emerging criminal uses that are not yet widely observed. The August workshop used strategic foresight and scenario development to explore how these changes could unfold. 

Pardee's contribution 

WEF invited Moyer to share how foresight scenarios are developed. Drawing on Pardee’s scenario-development work with International Futures (IFs), the Institute’s open-source, integrated forecasting platform, Moyer discussed how scenarios can make assumptions explicit and examine possible pathways. His contribution connected technological change with the social, geopolitical, economic, and regulatory conditions that could shape cybercrime risks. 

Learn more 

Read more about WEF's Partnership against Cybercrime.