Aesthetics, Sustainability and Education

Background and format

The urgency of the climate and ecological crises is well established. Yet, even after decades of environmental education and communication, still too little is being done. This highlights the need to explore how education and communication for sustainability can bring about transformative learning – engaging students, the public, and decision-makers in more attentive and caring ways of relating to the world. Such transformation involves an affective and aesthetic dimension, shaping how people see the world and their place within it. This workshop examines how environmental aesthetics and the aesthetics of science can promote more respectful relationships with nature. More broadly, it will engage environmental philosophy and explore how aesthetic approaches can strengthen sustainability education and communication. There will be lectures by senior researchers, as well as short project presentations and group sessions led by early-stage investigators (see Program).

Lectures by senior researchers

Emily Brady (Scotland, formerly Texas A&M University), Ólafur Páll Jónsson (University of Iceland) Martin Hauberg-Lund Laugesen (University of Southern Denmark), Mariagrazia Portera (University of Firenze), Marta Tafalla (The Autonomous University of Barcelona), and Henrik Zinkernagel (University of Granada) (see Abstracts).

Contributions by early-stage investigators

Katrine Dicte Blohm (University of Copenhagen), Carolina Cuadrado (Complutense University of Madrid), Gunndís Ýr Finnbogadóttir (University of Iceland), Laura Fumagalli (University of Augsburg), David Garcimartínn Arenas (Complutense University of Madrid), Noora-Helena Korpelainen (University of Helsinki), Carlotta La Penna (Institut Jean Nicod), Monika Lindner (University of Iceland), and Stephanie Schuster (University of Basel) (see Posters).