GSE Lecture Series - Professor Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti (University of British Columbia)

Facing Human Wrongs: Navigating the complexities and paradoxes of social and global change

This session will offer an overview of the work of the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures Arts/Research Collective (https://decolonialfutures.net/), with a focus on the instructional design principles of the interdisciplinary open course “Facing Human Wrongs: Navigating the complexities and paradoxes of social and global change” (https://blogs.ubc.ca/facinghumanwrongs/), which was designed to enable participants to expand their capacity and develop stamina to hold space for difficult conversations about wicked social and global challenges without feeling immobilized or demanding immediate quick fixes. This open (un)learning course uses a decolonial pedagogical framework structured around an anchoring analysis of 4 denials: the denial of systemic complicity in harm (the fact that our comforts and securities happen at the expense of others and of the planet); the denial of unsustainability of growth paradigms; the denial of entanglement (non-separability); and the denial of the depth and magnitude of our complex global predicament (the desire for quick fixes and idealization of hopeful futures). Each unit of the course was organized around an (un)learning bundle consisting of seven tasks, including meta-analytical and psycho-analytical components, land-based exercises (e.g. forest walks) and engagement with artistic practices. The course illustrates a pedagogical orientation that aims to equip us to navigate VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) in the work of social and global change.

About the Speaker

Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti holds a Canada Research Chair in Race, Inequalities and Global Change, at the Department of Educational Studies, University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.  She has extensive experience working across sectors internationally in areas of education related to international development, global citizenship, community engagement and social accountability.  Her work opens decolonial possibilities for addressing ethnocentric and paternalistic relationships in global and local engagements. Her research focuses on analyses of historical and systemic patterns of reproduction of inequalities and how these mobilize global imaginaries that limit or enable different possibilities for (co)existence. Excerpts from her book Hospicing Modernity: Facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism can be found at: https://decolonialfutures.net/hospicingmodernity/.

LECTURE RECORDING

A recording of the lecture is available on ELE for all Exeter IT Account holders.