Richard Alan Slaughter, PhD, is an Australian educator and scholar. He is notable for his studies in the field of critical futures today, which developed from the intersection of futures studies and social constructivism.
Slaughter is co-director of Foresight International and author of various books, including The Foresight Principle (1995), Futures for the Third Millennium (1999), and Futures Beyond Dystopia (2004). In 2005 he released a 7-part Pathways to Foresight DVD series for individual and small group study.
Slaughter is known for his contributions to educators who teach the future of society through the World Futures Studies Federation, for editing The Knowledge Base of Futures Studies, a CD-ROM collection of graduate readings used internationally, and for founding The Australian Foresight Institute.
Slaughter's critical futures is not about forecasting the future, but opening up space for alternative views, discourses and challenges to the status quo. His futures tool, the 'transformation cycle' (T-cycle), is an ideational framework for understanding social innovation and legitimation processes.
Richard A. Slaughter participated in the Stock Exchange of Visions project in 2007. He writes and has been a guest editor for Futures journal.[1][2]
For more on Slaughter's approach to social foresight, see Jose Ramos, From Critique to Cultural Recovery AFI, 2003.