ABSTRACT. In this paper, I present some initial findings of the research project “Counter-Narratives of Cancer: Shaping Narrative Agency” (2023-2027). In the project, we have organised a pilot reading group, a bibliotherapeutic Narrative Agency Reading Group (NARG) for breast cancer patients, studying the potential of such a group to enhance the participants’ narrative agency, that is, their ability to navigage their narrative environments and to find their own ways of narrating their experiences in relation to dominant and countering cultural narratives.

This paper focuses on how the reading group forms a dialogical space that fosters a joint narrative imagination and allows the participants to explore and expand their sense of the possible. I discuss this narrative community as a community of possibility, looking at how the discussion over the course of the reading group entails developing a shared “narrative in-between” (Meretoja 2018), an intersubjective space that makes certain experiences shareable and expressible but may make other experiences difficult to verbalize. This paper contributes to the intersection of possibility studies, narrative studies, and reading group research.

ABSTRACT. Curriculum has been identified as a potential constraint on integrating creative writing models to foster creativity in formal education (White & Lorenzi, 2016). The focus on creativity within the Framework for Junior Cycle (NCCA, 2015) was expected to enhance integration at lower secondary level in Ireland (Dowling Long, 2015), yet creative writing instruction has only partially benefited from this reform. Against this backdrop, this study examined how a bespoke creative writing model, designed within the Junior Cycle English specification, could support teachers in fostering creativity. This mixed-methods research gathered English teachers’ views on creativity and creative writing in Junior Cycle English. Findings revealed that while teachers strongly valued creativity, their awareness of creative writing pedagogies was limited, and perceptions of its curricular significance varied. As part of the research process, teachers actively contributed to redeveloping a creative writing model derived from three existing ones. This participatory approach provided insights into their diverse experiences and beliefs and enabled participants to adapt the model to their teaching environments, fostering teacher agency (Priestley et al., 2015). Findings indicate the model effectively supported teachers. Moreover, the study reinforces research highlighting the value of collaborative inquiry in transformative teacher professional learning (Priestley & Drew, 2016).

ABSTRACT. Songs contain kaleidoscopic possibilities. Each utterance beckons writer, listener and song into trialogues of connection. Songs are the lifeblood of the popular music ecosystem: songs enable musicians to play, artists to perform, audiences to be inspired, and copyrights to be exploited! The logical conclusion to this metaphor is that if songs are the lifeblood of the music eco system, then the beating heart of music is, and always will be its people. For songwriting education, it is necessary, therefore, to develop a human-centred pedagogy for songwriting that is fit for the challenges of the 21st century.

Constructed from Cziksentmihaly’s (2015) ‘Systems model of creativity’ and Biesta’s (2021) ‘World-centred education’, this paper presents a new pedagogical model called the ‘colour wheel curriculum’ that I have developed as part of my work leading the higher education songwriting community of practice at the Institute of Music Performance (ICMP). The colour wheel curriculum uses basic colour wheel theory to articulate interrelationships between primary colour nouns ‘agent’, ‘domain’ and ‘field’; their secondary colour verbs ‘making’, ‘sharing’ and ‘becoming’; and their myriad of tertiary colour adjectives.

The colour wheel curriculum is a simple tool that makes visible the phenomenological processes of makingsharingbecoming inherent in every song.

ABSTRACT. This PhD self-study explores the use of philosophical inquiry to cultivate critical consciousness in preservice teachers, empowering them to effectively teach Global Citizenship Education by critically engaging with its complex concepts.

This Research Ireland funded study contributes to three interconnected fields, philosophical inquiry, critical pedagogy, and GCE, by demonstrating how PhI can explore real-world challenges and nurture transformative GCE educators through adopting a CP problem-posing model. Furthermore, it aligns with the educational goals and principles of the Irish Aid Global Citizenship Education Strategy 2021-2025 by proposing and evaluating a participatory teaching method to deepen practitioners’ engagement with GCE.

This qualitative self-study employs an action research design grounded in the critical pedagogy principle of collaboration between researcher and participants. It comprises two major cycles involving third year B.Ed students taking GCE specific modules. Data will be collected through inquiry recordings, focus group interviews, and a reflective journal informed by discussions with a critical friend. Thematic critical discourse analysis will examine how power, ideology, and knowledge are constructed and contested in my reflections and participants’ discourse.

This paper will discuss the initial findings from the first cycle of the research, highlighting emergent themes and their implications.

ABSTRACT. If higher education is to prepare students for the societal and environmental challenges of the ‘Anthropocene’, new approaches to teaching and research are needed (Chappell, et al. 2023). It follows that such approaches must be underpinned by new and flexible concepts. The new materialist concept of ‘response-ability’ reworks traditional notions of individual human responsibility (Baan Hofman, 2023). As well as this, response-ability, with its hyphen, means ‘the ability to respond’. In other words, ethical engagement, be it with humans or nonhumans, is about inviting and enabling the response of the other (Barad and Gandorfer, 2021). Further, response-ability requires nurturing and cultivation (Haraway, 2016). In this way, response-ability as a concept has multiple strands, encompassing not only ethical, but also onto-epistemological and pedagogical considerations.

In this presentation I’ll first trace some of the theoretical strands interwoven in the concept of ‘response-ability’ and then explain why I find it useful as a concept. To illustrate, I’ll present my current research into learning experiences on a creative performance module, working with new materialisms to explore some of the ways in which university students, teachers, researchers, and their material learning environments, respond to and become response-able for new challenges and possibilities.

ABSTRACT. Is it possible for a school not to stand on the transmission of the past nor the reproduction of the present? How to imagine an educational practice based on uncertainty, desire, and future? As part of a PhD research, this lecture offers theoretical and practical insights into worlding, a concept developed in game studies (Cheng) and philosophy (Fisher; Campagna). Thus, I illustrate its artistic-educational potential in both arts and pedagogy: on the one hand, I connect it to traditions such as utopian studies (Firth; Munoz), futurities (Demos), critical fabulation (Hartman), speculative design (Dunne & Raby); on the other hand, I observe it in the light of various contemporary pedagogies: from Ranciere's ignorant teacher to Biesta's worldly education, from the critical tradition (Freire, hooks) to the so-called post-critical school (Vlieghe et alii). I then put into practice worlding as an artistic-pedagogical methodology: I offer an account of Wunder Bunker, a workshop involving teenagers within an Erasmus+ project between Madrid and Turin: a process that uses apocalyptic scenarios and playful scores to promote skills about beauty: beyond survivalism, which practices of the marvelous would be worth to be saved and (re)created in a world beyond the end?

ABSTRACT. Innovative educational research partnerships have the capacity to advance transnational learning, decolonize discourses of creativity, and leverage technology to equalize access to lifelong learning. This presentation explores a tripartite ecosystem of transnational, transdisciplinary and transmedia learning activations within higher education. Novel pedagogical platforms are infused with recent exploratory research into the influence of individual, cultural and social memory and the integration of digital and conventional meaning-making through art, craft and storytelling. Existing arts education paradigms frequently neglect the value of international, transdisciplinary, and transmedia collaboration, overlooking opportunities for desynchronization as a means to query epistemological boundaries and to explore novel transdisciplinary spaces of exchange. Our inventive experimental activations highlight the dynamic convergence of art, science and technology as a learning commons with applied 'glocal' projects, bringing situated, arts-based knowledges to global contexts. Building upon futures thinking, the UN Sustainability Development Goals, and public pedagogies, we emphasize arts-based translanguaging—a reconceptualization that includes multimodal, multisensory methods of communication. We invite educators to embrace seeing what might be, rather than what is, rethinking education as an inclusive, creative practice that equips students to thrive as global citizens with diverse modes of thinking, feeling and doing, involving multi-leveled, multi-layered, and intra-disciplinary collaboration.

ABSTRACT. The Theory of the Possible understands the human being as sociogenetically constituted as we become people through otherness and culture. This other that inscribes/describes us in existence is different from us. Thinking, and creating about possibilities, about experiences that do not yet exist, places us in a scenario focused on the future, and the future is only possible in otherness. The Theory of the Possible proposes the exercise of imagining and acting in a complex world, which we must know well, in order to propose actions for tomorrow. School offers us multiple possibilities for socialization, social interactions and exercises of projection into the future. It is a space available for the experimentation of possibility. Despite the limitations, rules and specific cultural practices that can restrict pedagogical work, each school represents a potential space for the creation of something new. Thinking about a Pedagogy of the Possible, the school emerges as a fertile field where we can experiment and imagine the most diverse future scenarios, work on solving problems in the most varied ways, explore the limits of thinking, feeling and creating, and project ourselves into the future, into the new, into what we need to live in a disruptive world.

ABSTRACT. This paper advocates for the need to address the current culture of de-somatization (Claxton, 2016, Damasio 1994, 2018, Grosz 1994, Olsen 2022) through the development of a more integrated approach to research into creative cognition. It draws on knowledge from the field of dance studies where there is a widely accepted understanding that thinking and moving are not two separate activities; rather the body is a self-organising system that operates as a functional whole. This idea sits in stark contrast to traditional academic domains where the role of movement, and the body more broadly, is frequently ignored in theories that investigate how creative thinking occurs. This paper explores the premise that intelligence is a whole body happening (Claxton, 2016, Sheets-Johnstone, 1992, 2009, 2019) and consider the implications this theory has for research which explores the mechanisms which support creative cognition. The paper draws on examples from dance improvisation practices (Midgelow, 2019), proposing that 'giving the body its due’ (Sheets-Johnstone, 1992) can provide new ways to enhance creative thinking both within dancemaking contexts, and more broadly across other domains and fields of research such as creativity research (psychology) and embodied cognition (cognitive science, philosophy of mind).

ABSTRACT. Gap in knowledge / practice Current times of crisis and conflict call an expansion of the realm of possibilities. This will require us to leave the security of established certainties and enter liminal spaces of potentiality. This is uncomfortable and challenging for many. However, it is very familiar to clowns, who constantly inhabit uncertainty and unpredictability. Theoretical background The art of clowning is one which requires us to discard preconceptions and expectations, leaving us open to all possibilities. Thus, invoking the wisdom of clowns, in challenging times is not as unusual as it may seem. Conceptual innovation This paper extends current work on clowning principles in pedagogy and organisational development, to possibility studies, proposing that these principles can be a benefit in contemplating the possible. The clown’s familiarity with uncertainty and discomfort makes them a model for embracing potentiality and possibility. Implications for theory / research / practice This paper introduces clowning practices as a tool to for professionals to foster environments and practices which are open to what is possible Conclusion The suggestion is that if we can learn to embody some ‘clown spirit’, this will allow us to embrace the uncertainty and discomfort associated with envisioning new possibilities.

ABSTRACT. In this exploratory study, we documented the variety of meanings and ranges of experiences that people associate with the word “silence”. The research involved developing premises for a “qualitative-first” content analysis, based on the anonymous responses of 116 participants to six incomplete sentences prompts. If a participant described two or more features of silence in their response, we coded these entries separately. We analyzed 890 codes via the social representations theory. The analysis of the data suggests that social representations of silence are not purely sensory but rather are constructed. In other words, they are mediated by specific activities, intentions, emotions, values, and interactions with others or the self. Regardless of whether moments of silence occur intentionally or unexpectedly, they appear to influence attention and focus on different tasks. These moments can also serve as a necessary contrast and variation during activities. One of the key aspects of the data concerns the relational dimensions of silence and their potential to deepen or jeopardize our relationship with the self, others, the environment, or even God for some. The value of contextual and sociocultural approaches to the study of silence in everyday life is further discussed considering these findings.

ABSTRACT. Looking at three ethics frameworks from history, education and wellbeing, this paper considers the possibilities and troubles of postqualitative emotion-driven research, in which the researcher places themselves within the flow of the research, rather than observing it. This can leave an uncomfortable gap between existing ethical frameworks, as notions of academic rigour and ethical clearance are explicitly entangled with separation from the personal.

Using the British Educational Research Association (BERA), the Oral History Association (OHA) and the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) guidelines, the positionality of the researcher is explored in three ways; 1. as human, 2. as coinhabitant of higher education and 3. as affective sense maker and poet. In order to achieve this balance, I offer the concept of affective expropriation – affective, encompassing autoethnographic poetry creation; expropriation as a form of dustbin for emotions around Higher Education, sacrificed to sit with the trouble.

The choice of these disciplinary frameworks acknowledges the personal multidisciplinary trouble in which I work, as an art/ design history and education researcher, as well as a trained counsellor. The commonalities are thrown into relief while the differences articulate disciplinary emphases.

ABSTRACT. Higher education institutions (HEIs) are at a crossroads, facing urgent ecological, social, and technological shifts that demand more than incremental adaptation. This workshop, drawing from the multi-annual Tomorrow’s University project at the University of Limerick, invites participants to explore futures-thinking tools and regenerative frameworks to rethink the university’s role in shaping a sustainable and thriving world.

Rooted in strategic foresight and participatory methods, the workshop will introduce key concepts from the Tomorrow’s University Futures Report and Position Paper, engaging participants in an interactive process of imagining alternative higher education models. Participants will work through scenario-building exercises, reflecting on institutional transformation beyond the SDGs toward regenerative development.

Takeaways include: Exposure to applied foresight methodologies tailored for HEIs Insights into regenerative development as a strategic lens Practical tools for embedding futures-thinking into institutional planning This session is for educators, administrators, and policymakers interested in rethinking the future of universities as active agents of change.

ABSTRACT. Sustainability education requires fostering students’ agency to imagine alternative futures, yet traditional approaches often limit creativity and intercultural dialogue. This study explores how mathematical art and generative AI enable children to engage with sustainability challenges at the boundary of the possible and impossible, enhancing imagination and transformative thinking.

Drawing from Possibility Studies, transdisciplinary learning, and decolonial perspectives, the research examines how Finnish and South African children co-construct sustainability futures through artistic and digital tools. The study engaged 580+ Finnish 6th-grade students in an interactive exhibition featuring South African mathematical artworks, prompting responses through hands-on mathematical art and AI-generated sustainability solutions.

Data, including AI-generated images, mathematical artworks, and written reflections, were analyzed through co-occurrence network and thematic analysis. Findings highlight how intercultural artistic exchange expanded students' imagination of sustainability solutions, with mathematical art fostering structural and systemic thinking, while AI encouraged speculative and counterfactual exploration. However, AI’s limitations—such as cultural biases—also emerged.

The study demonstrates that combining intercultural creative dialogue, hands-on mathematical art, and generative AI fosters a “possibilities mindset” in sustainability education. This reinforces the need for learning environments where children can collaboratively construct alternative futures, expanding agency and imagination within sustainability transformations.

ABSTRACT. This paper presentation argues for reconceptualising empathy as an affective, embodied encompassing human and more-than-human entities, essential for fostering ethical responsibility in environmental decision-making. In the Anthropocene, I argue that empathy acts as a catalyst for transformative change, however, I critique traditional notions of empathy centred solely on human perspectives using insights from Rifkin (2009) and De Waal (2010), arguing instead for a relational understanding of interconnected life. I therefore create an argument for understanding empathy as more affective than cognitive, advocating for a non-hierarchical approach incorporating the more-than-human. Barad (2007), Braidotti (2013), and Haraway (1997) inform my argument for empathy as a dynamic process within human/more-than-human entanglements. Drawing also on Indigenous knowledges (e.g. Country et al, 2016) and critiques from Massumi (1995) and Leys (2011), I advocate for an affective, embodied empathy. Highlighting agency through Bennett (2010) and Taylor (2016), I argue this relational empathy fosters ethical climate action by deepening understanding of human/more-than-human relations. Finally, I explore integrating affective, embodied empathy into environmental education frameworks, advocating for a perspective that enables a deeper understanding of our ethical responsibilities to the planet and contributing to a more ethical approach to addressing the climate crisis.

ABSTRACT. Possible Selves refer to the conceptions of who a person might become in the future, and consider hopes, fears, and expectations in a social context (Markus and Nurius, 1986). These representations of the person in the future can serve as incentives to motivate agency and specific actions to shape the future (Baumeister and Vohs, 2003).

The study of possible selves in long-term futures has been proposed to explore motivation and agency in engineering and futures for Sustainable Development (Fernández López, 2021; 2022); however, long-term futures and Sustainable Development needs more attention in the prolific and broad work developed on possible selves from 1986 to today, predominantly centred in short time frames. Furthermore, the large body of literature on possible selves has focused on cognitive self-descriptions, with less attention to experiential and embedded possible selves apprehended trough the integration of artistic expression and attention to meta-cognition and presence.

This work aims at exploring possible selves in engineering education and how those integrate futures based on a vision for social commitment beyond economic growth, based on equality and well-being (Jackson, 2009). We specify the inclusion of specific curricula interventions towards self-knowledge in engineering education and the identification of opportunities for further development.

ABSTRACT. As emerging technologies blur the line between biology and machinery, the definition of “human” is expanding. This paper explores how convergent innovations in technology and creative expression shape our future - particularly among Animasapiens, Transhumans, and Starborns.

Animasapiens are humans who seek higher wisdom through external technological aids, enhancing their holistic well-being without integrating devices into their bodies. Transhumans, by contrast, merge organic and synthetic components, using implants and genetic modifications to transcend natural limitations. Starborns represent a new human species, conceived in outer space and evolving to thrive beyond Earth’s boundaries.

Art and dialogue remain central to these radical shifts, offering inclusive platforms for interdisciplinary collaboration. By uniting scientists, artists, and policymakers, this approach examines how these emergent identities challenge conventional notions of personhood and propel us into new frontiers. In highlighting Animasapiens, Transhumans, and Starborns, this paper underscores the urgency for adaptive ethics, responsible innovation, and shared aspiration as we redefine boundaries for our collective future.

ABSTRACT. Generative AI (GenAI) is transforming education, particularly in fostering creativity through co-creation, collaboration, and adaptive learning. This chapter explores how GenAI tools, such as ChatGPT, can enhance creative processes by providing personalized feedback, facilitating brainstorming, and supporting interdisciplinary exploration. By expanding cognitive diversity and dialogic learning, GenAI aligns with 21st-century educational priorities, including creativity, problem-solving, and adaptive thinking. Building on theoretical frameworks, this chapter introduces polyphonic creativity, extending Bakhtin’s concept of polyphony to human-AI collaboration. The STEPRE model is applied to demonstrate how structured learning environments can scaffold AI-enhanced creativity while preserving dialogic engagement and interdisciplinary knowledge construction. Despite its potential, GenAI also presents challenges. Over-reliance on AI-generated content may undermine students’ critical thinking and originality, necessitating pedagogical strategies that balance AI assistance with human agency. Ethical concerns—such as algorithmic bias, transparency, and authorship—must be addressed to ensure equitable and responsible AI integration in education. This chapter underscores the importance of AI literacy for educators, advocating for research-informed approaches that foster co-creativity while upholding human agency. As AI evolves, it must be positioned as a collaborative partner that enhances, rather than replaces, human creativity in education.

ABSTRACT. The concept of possibility provides a compelling lens for understanding relationships enabled through technology, shifting the focus from what currently exists to what could exist. Digital interactions often involve imagined or projected connections - relationships that exist in the present but are shaped by future possibilities. Drawing on Honeycutt’s (2008) Imagined Interaction Theory, this paper explores how individuals use technology to mentally simulate and indirectly experience anticipated or past communicative encounters.

Building on Valsiner’s notion of irreversible time, this study examines how memory and imagination shape relational perceptions - how relationships were, how they are, and how they could be in the future. Past experiences are not merely recalled but actively reconstructed in the present, influencing expectations for the future. Technology further amplifies this process by extending relational boundaries of time and space, enabling new forms of intimacy and disconnection.

Through a qualitative analysis of thirteen in-depth interviews, this paper explores how people negotiate the paradoxes of technologically mediated relationships - how digital affordances create closeness, distance, ambient presence, and severance. By analyzing these relational tensions, this study highlights how individuals renegotiate what constitutes a relationship through past, present, and future interplay.

ABSTRACT. The use of AI recommendation algorithms to assist human decision-making has become so commonplace in our engagement with digital platforms that we often rely on them for suggestions; whether that is what to buy, what to watch, or who to follow. The black-box nature of these technologies underscores their lack of transparency, which is particularly concerning considering that children and teenagers are at the coalface of these algorithms. New regulations are increasingly focused on protecting young people from harmful online content. Despite the content moderation policies and practices of tech companies, teenagers are constantly exposed to harmful material on social media, from violent and disturbing imagery to dangerous ideologies and misinformation campaigns. The ARTAI project is developing a large-scale simulation platform ‘to advance an understanding of how content is disseminated to people online, support ethics auditing and improve oversight and transparency of recommender algorithms’, through engaging with key stakeholders, including young people. This paper presents the findings from focus groups conducted with Transition Year students in Ireland. Employing a collaborative design practice the feedback from these focus groups directly impacts the design of the platform, thus recognising young people as change agents.

ABSTRACT. This study explores the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and creative leadership, examining how multiple intelligences (MI) theory shapes leadership effectiveness in AI-integrated environments. As AI automates technical and analytical tasks, linguistic and interpersonal intelligence are becoming key for leaders to foster creativity and innovation. The study envisions future leadership paradigms, considering how human intelligence interacts with AI-driven transformation. It examines how linguistic intelligence might evolve in a world dominated by AI-mediated communication and whether interpersonal intelligence will remain a uniquely human leadership asset. Finally, the research highlights the critical balance between AI augmentation and human-centered intelligences, creativity, and ethical reasoning, ensuring leadership remains adaptive, inclusive, and future-ready.

ABSTRACT. It is said that moments of crisis can also present great opportunities. Given the current political and humanitarian crises in the US, Ukraine, and Israel / Gaza (to name a few), this symposium explores the generative possibilities of creative collaboration in challenging times. We will examine creative collaboration from the perspectives of organizational creativity, innovation, and leadership; law and restorative justice; the psychotherapeutic modality of Internal Family Systems (IFS); and the framework of creative survival. We view creative collaboration as a synergistic process that brings together multiple minds, resources, and perspectives to navigate and address the complex challenges we face as individuals, and as a global society, at this time. The symposium will include presentations from Melinda Rothouse, PhD; Randy Langford, J.D.; Alisa Carr, LCSW, and Robert Cleve, Ph.D. We draw both from our professional work, research, and teaching in academia, law, and social work, as well as from our direct experiences of creative collaboration in a range of professional and artistic contexts. We offer this collaborative symposium in the spirit of hope for a more peaceful and equitable world order.

ABSTRACT. Our world is comprised of a complex matrix of vibrations. Hearing is involuntary, listening voluntary, deep listening active, and quantum listening multiplicitous. We listen with the whole body, sensing, touching, interpreting, making meaning and opening to possibilities. Our senses and our breath connect us with our immediate surrounds, and the ways in which spacetime passes through us, entangling us with the deep past and long-term future. Together in this workshop we experiment with choreographies of bodily materialism through sensory engagement, deep listening, attunement, resonance, synchrony, and awareness of nonhuman worldings. Drawing on feminist materialism and posthumanism, the workshop aims at reflexive engagement with bodily materialism that is central to our collective ecological imaginings and acts to reground social participation in community and planetary wellbeing. Through sensory attunement to whale songs and the sonic enactment of ‘whale’, we connect differently to our bodies, our breath, our world, and to nonhuman worldings. In doing so, we perform the mutual interdependence of material, biocultural and nonhuman forces in the making of generative practices. These practices we argue, open up manifold possibilities with the potential to transform personal and professional lives and foster concern for ecological and planetary wellbeing.