Sharing Experiences and Reflections – Presentation of JEP 4/2024 – Hybrid Event
Monday, 28. April 2025,
6 PM CET – 10 AM Mexico City (CST) – 1 PM Caxias do Sul (UTC -3)
Alois Wagner-Saal, C3 – Centrum für Internationale Entwicklung, Sensengassse 3, 1090 Wien
Transformation is one of the key catchwords of the early 21st century. In light of severe social-ecological and political crises, and an unprecedented acceleration of socio-technical changes, transformation is called for in all sorts of discourses. In stark contrast to an ivory tower idea of research and a ‘banking model’ of education that draw strength from isolation and separation, a new paradigm is on the rise that relies on commonality and connectivity.
The demand that research on social-ecological problems should develop transformative power has manifested in the concept of transformative research. It combines knowledge production with transformative action dealing with concrete situations at stake and has brought forth collaborative research approaches and alliances across societal domains.
The demand for transformation has also been at the bottom of the work of the Brazilian pedagogue Paulo Freire who developed a radical vision and practice of research and learning as abilities to understand and transform the world. Developed in highly unequal and unjust social-political and economic environments in Brazil, his approach to alphabetization consisted in learning to read and write the world as an act of liberation through conscientization.
What is Freire’s notion of transformation? How can connectivity serve as research principle? In how far can we integrate affectivity as important dimension of research? These are some of the questions we discuss around the concept of transformation itself with editors and contributors of the special edition.
Programme:
Welcome and presentation of the Special Issue:
Ulli Vilsmaier (Editor, Responsive Research Collective), Gerald Faschingeder (Editor, Paulo Freire Center Vienna)
Sharing Experiences and Reflections on transformative research:
Juliana Mercon (Editor and contributor, Institute for Research in Education at Universidad Veracruzana, Mexico; via Zoom)
Danilo Streck (Contributor, Professor at the Graduate Program in Education at the Universidade de Caxias do Sul UCS, Brazil; via Zoom)
Ulli Vilsmaier (Editor and contributor, Responsive Research Collective and adjunct Professor at Leuphana University Lüneburg)
Comment:
Andreas Novy (WU – Vienna University of Economics, Institute for Spatial and Social-Ecological Transformations – ISSET), member of the Advisory Board and founder of the Paulo Freire Center Vienna)
