Inequality is rising. Mass displacement of people is at its highest level in decades. The rise of artificial intelligence and big data both threatens job security and promises huge opportunities. The climate is changing. No one is immune.

These challenges stretch across the traditional boundaries of national borders, institutional walls and areas of expertise. We need a response that does likewise. The Edinburgh Futures Institute is our answer.

It will be where our world-class interdisciplinary expertise in social and data science, the arts, and humanities meets the external organisations that are tackling society’s most pressing needs.

We are seeking partners from all sectors to engage with our leading academics and outstanding students, to co-create tools for the common good, and to incubate major projects.

Through teaching, research and engagement, a key part of our mission is to interrogate how data creates disorder and opportunities within the economy, creative industries and policy.

Only Edinburgh – as a University and a city – can do this. It is home to a major international financial centre and the world’s biggest arts festival. It is a global leader in public policy expertise and is the UK’s foremost centre for data science and artificial intelligence.

How can economics tackle climate change? Can designers lessen the refugee crisis? What can sociology do to ensure artificial intelligence works for the common good? Can divinity collaborate with management to build a more ethical world? Our academics will share ideas and embark upon joint projects with unparalleled depth and ease. We will develop new research and co-designed teaching programmes that will respond to the world’s most pressing issues.

We will create graduates that are creative, reasoned and thoughtful citizens with the ability to operate amid disruption, difference and volatility. They will not be bound by seeing the world through a single perspective, but will understand how different institutions work and intersect. Upon launch, the Futures Institute will be a network across the University. In 2021 it will move into its permanent home at the heart of the University in the refurbished Old Royal Infirmary.