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Overview

Democracy isn’t simply a technical process focussed on history, principles, rules and institutions; democracy is a way of governing and a way of relating to each other that is a here-and-now experience. To protect and strengthen democracy, education that supports democratic values and sensibilities, known as 'education for democracy', is vital. However, education for democracy often omits the role that sensory experience, emotion, and physical engagement plays - or in other words, the aesthetic and embodied nature of learning.

The AECED project - Transforming Education for Democracy through Aesthetic and Embodied Learning, Responsive Pedagogy and Democracy-as-becoming – seeks to enhance and transform the role of aesthetic and embodied learning for democracy. Funded by Horizon Europe and UKRI, AECED involves partners from six European countries: Finland, Croatia, Latvia, Germany, Portugal, and the UK (associated partner).

The project, which started in 2023, has developed a prototype aesthetic and embodied Pedagogical Framework and prototype Guides to Practice. These prototypes have been trialled, through participatory research, in nineteen different cases, across different phases of education, in the different national contexts. The findings from these trials are informing the development of the Pedagogical Framework and Guides to Practice before their launch.

In this online session, insights from AECED, and particularly the cases sited within higher education settings and the higher education phase, will be shared. They will provide examples of the aesthetic and embodied learning for democracy trialled in the research and the individual and collective transformational changes they experienced as a result, and reflect on the opportunities and challenges of working in these ways within higher education institutions.  Each partner input will include time for questions and reflective comments.

Session attendees will also have an opportunity to engage in an art-based and embodied activity to explore their own understandings of democracy, and education for democracy in their own practice.

Schedule

Speaker bios

Professor Karen Mpamhanga is Professor of Higher Education and Professional Learning at the University of Hertfordshire. Karen is a creative and critical education researcher and has also published widely in the field of higher education and has a particular research and practice development interest in Transnational Education (TNE). She is currently working on a large Horizon Europe / UKRI funded project, AECED, which is focussed on education for democracy, where she led the UK’s research trial focussing on the development of democratic doctoral supervision (see https://aeced.org/about-aeced/) .  Karen is executive editor of the journal Teaching in Higher Education, co-editor of the Routledge book series Critical Practice in Higher Education, and co-convenor of the SRHE’s Higher Education Policy Network.

Jo Barber is a Research Assistant on the Horizon Europe/UKRI funded AECED project, working across the UK Professional and Secondary Cases. She is also a PhD student at the University of Hertfordshire researching Aesthetic and Embodied Learning for Democracy in Future Societies’ related to and focused on Aesthetic Justice. There are many parallels between Jo’s research and the AECED Project. Jo has experience across the educational sector as an art educator. She has been inspired by teaching art with underserved and excluded teenagers in secondary Alternative Provision, gaining a Master’s Degree in Social Justice and Education (IOE), which founded her interest in arts-based research methods and art pedagogy in developing anti-racist and socially just teaching practices. Jo is interested in how educators can critically and imaginatively co-create democratic aesthetic-embodied teaching practices to cultivate aesthetic justice and resist the perpetuation of educational injustices, marginalization and student exclusion.

Dr Sandra Wallenius-Korkalo is University Lecturer in Political Sciences at University of Lapland, Finland, where she has been teaching in the fields of International Relations, Political Science, Sociology, and Cultural History. Her research interests are multidisciplinary, relating to body politics, feminist and new materialist thought, arts, and (post)qualitative methodologies. She is currently working as a collaborative investigator on Horizon Europe and UKRI-funded AECED project, where she explores radical democratic thinking through aesthetic and embodied learning. Sandra has participated in and led a trial in the Finnish higher education case. She is keen on both researching and fostering transformative pedagogical practices in higher education.

Dr Cláudia Neves is Associate Professor at Universidade Aberta (UAb), Portugal’s public distance education university, where she teaches in the fields of education, democratic citizenship, and teacher professional development. With a background in Educational Sciences and a PhD in Education, her research focuses on online education, digital pedagogies, and inclusive, democratic learning environments. She is particularly interested in how aesthetic and embodied approaches can foster deeper engagement and democratic sensibilities in virtual settings. Cláudia has coordinated national and international projects and is a core member of the Horizon Europe-funded AECED project, where she leads the Portuguese trials in adult and higher education. Her work critically explores the intersections between educational policies, pedagogical ethics, and technology-mediated spaces in contemporary education.

Dr Juliana Oliveira holds a PhD in History, Politics and Cultural Heritage at Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV- CPDOC), Brazil (2019), a Master’s in Built Environment and Sustainable Heritage from the School of Architecture at Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil, and a bachelor´s degree in Tourism, from Universidade FUMEC. From 2021 to 2022 she was an associated researcher at CIES, Iscte and from 2022 to 2023 she was an integrated researcher at Interdisciplinary NOVA University Lisbon – Centre of Social Sciences (CICS.NOVA), with a post-doctoral scholarship in the project SMOOTH – Educational Common Spaces – Passing through enclosures and reversing. Continuing her research in the field of Democracy and Education she joined the AECED project in 2023 as a post-doctoral researcher in Universidade Aberta and is a member of the Education and Distance Learning Laboratory (LE@D).