With Roman Bartosch (University of Cologne),
Wiebke Dannecker (University of Cologne),
Julia Hoydis (University of Graz),
Per Esben Svelstad (Norwegian University of Science and Technology),
and Kate Rigby (University of Cologne)
April 8, 2025 | 17:45 | Auerbach Library, MESH (Weyertal 59, third floor)
This public roundtable brings together scholars from various fields in the humanities with a joint interest in the role of aesthetic experience in shaping, challenging, and transforming formal education in the humanities and in literary and cultural learning at school. The conversation will take the idea that aesthetic education is indeed a ‘beautiful risk’ (Gert Biesta) as its starting point and first invite all speakers to recount their own journey of aesthetic learning and to chart possible future ways of engaging with aesthetic experience before opening the floor and inviting the audience to share their experience and think through aesthetic spaces of possibility together.
This event not only invites attendees to join the conversation of invited speakers, but it also conjoins several initiatives at the University of Cologne and beyond:
- It is hosted by the research hub for Multidisciplinary Environmental Studies in the Humanities (MESH) and therefore shares the hub’s interests in socioecological calamities, multispecies and planetary wellbeing, as well as disaster preparedness.
- It has grown out of a collaboration between researchers and educators in the European network Teacher Education for a Future in Flux (teff) and is therefore dedicated to future-making practices and the potentials of aesthetic experience in the context of futures literacy in formal and informal education.
- And it is situated in a wider network of research and outreach initiatives, including Sharing a Planet in Peril, the UNESCO/MOST BRIDGES Thematic Hub for Planetary Wellbeing, and the project Eco-critical Literacy in Music- and Arts-Based Education (Eco-Lit) and therefore welcomes perspectives and expertise from a wide network of disciplines and stakeholders.