Föreläsning med hedersdoktor Annalisa Sannino

Annalisa Sannino är professor vid Tampere universitet i Finland. Hennes forskning handlar om lärande, kollektiv handlingskraft och förändringsprocesser, med särskilt fokus på hur lärande kan bidra till jämlikhet och hållbarhet.

Sannino har sedan flera år ett nära samarbete med forskare vid Utbildningsvetenskapliga fakulteten och har bidragit till bland annat forskningsutveckling, forskarutbildning, seminarier och internationella nätverk.

On the responsibility of optimism: Change Laboratories evolving toward heterogeneous coalitions

The presentation focuses on current developments of the method of the Change Laboratory, their premises and prospects. Central to the argumentation is a dialogue with the construct of heterogeneous coalitions from the sociology of real utopias, and discussions on responsibility and optimism in the social sciences. 

Coalitions of heterogeneous actors and organizations can act transformatively and learn expansively to respond to acute historical contradictions. The construct of heterogenous coalitions embraces hands-on collective and longitudinal undertakings toward equity and sustainability. The construct is illustrated with the help examples from recent Change Laboratories seen as part of 4th generation Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT). 

The presentation highlights four pathways through which a perspective of responsibility of optimism can be pursued in educational research and in transdisciplinary endeavors in response to acute societal needs with the help of the Change Laboratory method. The responsibility of optimism can be nourished through work and education by 1. Thinking dialectically to grasp ecosystems and human activities as systems of relations in continuous flux; 2. Collectively overcoming paralyses of the will when sharing them and identifying their historical roots; 3. Delving in gray areas of possibilities, i.e., cracks that the contradictions of daily activities inevitably create, within which will for just transformations develops and thrives; 4. Cultivating unrecognized and suppressed forms of power that manifest in alternative modes of living, producing and organizing and persist against all odds.