Meet the Education Researcher has interviewed former Zennström Professor of Climate Change Leadership (2019 – 2020) Keri Facer. Listen below to hear more on her thinking about universities and climate change and ways to think about the future “in non-stupid ways”.
You can read more about Professor Facer’s work on Universities and Climate Change here.
What is required of universities in face of climate change? Read the new HEPI report by Keri Facer to find out!
Zennström Professor Keri Facer has called for the radical restructuring of Higher education and universities in response to climate change. You can read more on the website of the Higher Education Policy Institute. Or download the report here:
For more explorations and discussions regarding the role of the university in a changing climate, explore our work here.
In this report you can read about the 2019 collaboration between Zennström Climate Change Leadership at Uppsala University and the Uppsala Art Museum. Some of the ideas and findings from this report are elaborated upon in a forthcoming publication.
This report is written in English.
Några ord från Kuratorn, Rebecka Wigh Abrahamsson, Uppsala Art Museum
En rapport om samarbetet mellan Uppsala konstmuseum och Uppsala universitet kring utställningen ”The Non-Human Animal – Negotiating Bio-relations” hösten 2019. Samarbetet leddes av Keri Facer, Zennströmprofessor i Climate Change Leadership vid Uppsala universitet, som i sin forskning har ett stort fokus på konstens och humanioras roll i samtalet om och förståelsen kring klimatförändringarna.
Här beskrivs de olika aktiviteterna och de multidisciplinära perspektiv som vävdes samman i projektet, från pedagogiska och rituella, till diskussion om den politiska infrastrukturen.
En premiss i papporten är behovet av skapa fler intellektuella och emotionella rum för att diskutera alla de konflikter och motstridiga intressen som blir tydliga under antropocen, t ex möjligheten att bearbeta sorg. Här diskuteras vilken effekt ramverket kring dessa skapade rum får på samtalen.
Flera exempel på olika interdisciplinära modeller som prövades under projektet lyfts fram, samt den stora potential som finns i att se över och tänka nytt kring vad det betyder att vara människa idag genom pedagogiska, imaginära, rituella och politiska strukturer.
Watch Zennström Professor in Climate Change Leadership 2019 – 2020, Dr. Keri Facer deliver her inaugural lecture on the futures of universities in a changing climate.
This is a set of quick links to some of our work on Universities, Schools, Education in general and Climate Change
Universities and Climate Change
Zennström Professor Keri Facer’s Inaugural Lecture on ‘Learning to live with a lively planet: renewing the mission of the research university’
A report from the Initiative on Internationalisation and Sustainability – is it possible to square these two agendas?
A keynote from Keri Facer on Universities and the SDGs to the Transforming Higher Education for the Future (IAU) Conference in Puebla, Mexico, November 2019
A public debate on cities and climate change, with Richard Florida, at KTH Stockholm. Keri joined the panel to reflect on the climate implications of Florida’s proposals.
A public debate on universities and climate change – at Almedalen, with Professor Keri Facer, the Minister for Higher Education Matilda Ernkrans, Uppsala University Vice Chancellor Professor Eva Åkesson and the lead for Sweden’s Environment agenda, Dr Emma Nohrén.
A public debate on the role of science, industry and government in addressing climate change.
In Swedish – Universitetens roll för en hållbar värld – a public debate at Almedalen with Uppsala universitet, SLU, Karolinska institutet, Stockholms universitet, Handelshögskolan i Stockholm, KTH
What are the links beteween climate change and civic university agendas? A short post for the UK’s Higher Education Policy Institute
University Innovation Agendas – AIM Days and climate change – a report from Laila Mendy.
What sort of knowledge do we need to think about long term futures? Science and Futures in Government. A talk by Dr Claire Craig.
Are universities making the world worse? Education and research in an age of climate change . A panel discussion from Almedalen 2017 with Kevin Anderson, Josefin Wangel Weithz, and Johanna van Schaik Dernfalk.
General Education and Climate Change
A report from the Transforming Education for Sustainable Futures programme, led by Professor Keri Facer, which makes recommendations on Education and Climate Change
Four-part interview with Keri Facer, on the role of the future, the richness of the meanwhile, and desirable futures at the Constructing Social Futures Conference 2019 for Futuuri magazine. June 2019.
Education, Sustainable Development and the Challenges of Climate Change . CEMUS Spring Semester Introduction lecture 2016 with Professor Doreen Stabinsky.
Popular and Public Education
A report on the important role of transformative public education – public, dialogic, collaborative, transgressive – in addressing Covid-19, with implications also for climate change.
A report on a Legacy 17 workshop – a popular education strategy for addressing questions of sustainability.
Leading activity within Uppsala University
We have been working over the last year with the 2050 plan for the University Campus, supporting long term thinking about the link between climate change and university campuses. This includes events and consultation workshops.
Sustainability Talk on Campus Gotland, Uppsala University by Keri Facer. Building a University for the Common Good. March 2019.
In this report we summarise the activities of professor Keri Facer, the third Zennström professor of Climate Change Leadership at Uppsala University. This report is written in English.
I denna rapport sammanfattar vi aktiviteterna under perioden 2018 – 2020 med professor Keri Facer, den tredje Zennström professorn i klimatledarskap vid Uppsala universitet. Denna rapport är skriven på engelska.
Follow this new network ‘Transforming Education for Sustainable Futures’ with which Zennström Professor Keri Facer is involved! Keep an eye out for postings soon about transformative public education in context of CV-19.
Here is the first briefing paper on The Case for Transformative Public Education with leading contribution from Professor Facer. This paper focuses on responding to COVID-19 now while addressing long-term underlying inequalities.
Blog post by Zennström Professor Keri Facer on the Higher Education Policy Institute addressing the UPP Foundation Civic University Commission’s recent report on how universities can successfully serve in the 21st century. Climate change was a glaring omission in this report, as Keri writes.
Read post here: https://www.hepi.ac.uk/2020/03/04/reconnecting-the-civic-university-with-the-climate-agenda-thinking-globally-acting-locally/
A month ago, I had the opportunity to join in a two day workshop in Kollaboratoriet, Uppsala on Learning For Change. A small group of passionate individuals joined me in an emotional and challenging exploration to understand how we work as individuals and in the collective, towards our goals of sustainability. You can read more about Legacy 17 here.
I went with the conservative expectation of a workshop on how to integrate the Sustainable Development Goals in to one’s work. It was a pleasant surprise to be met with emotional and personalised approaches to understanding how we engage with sustainability, particularly in terms of structuring meetings, of deep listening, of celebrating achievements and humility, of mentoring speakers, and of reflecting as groups. In short, an emotionally reflective workshop on processes for working with sustainability. The culmination of which was a group largely made up of strangers, volunteering highly personal information and feeling confident enough in each other to share vulnerabilities.
The conclusions of this workshop are still ongoing, with the participants divided in to small groups to catch up over fika or through skype/ zoom periodically; we continue to work on using the Learning For Change process to strengthen our capacities in work with sustainability.
You can read more about these processes in the Learning For Change Handbook.
The report below provides a brief overview of some of our work in the Zennström Climate Change Leadership Initiative exploring the relationship between internationalisation and sustainability agendas in the contemporary university. It reports on a short programme of desk research by the team and a workshop bringing together university leadership, students, faculty and administrative staff. It identifies key tensions, possibilities, and routes towards achieving more sustainable internationalisation strategies in universities. The report has been compiled rapidly to respond to current debates and is intended as the basis for wider discussion. We are keen to hear from colleagues elsewhere to help develop these ideas further.
Over the course of the past few months, a small group of climate-interested Uppsala residents have been gathering to discuss climate fiction. The group was initiated by the Zennström Climate Change Leadership professor in order to explore how we might rethink, re-relate to, and reimagine our experiences of climate change in more creative forums. In our most recent meet up, we were tasked with bringing poems, short texts, and songs that reminded us of winter. Below are two poems written by Carolina from sparklets selected from 9 of these pieces. We realised, as Carolina read them out to us, that the meanings and tempos drastically change from the different orders through which they can be read.
It is December and nobody asked if I was ready
I just want somebody to hold me through the night
Aflame among the rest
When your cheeks are wet from weeping on your own
Stuck in a frozen state of shame
My soul instantly ignores what was there before
Perhaps the future is a tiny flame
Ring, happy bells, across the snow
There were no reindeer, but there were cats
…
There were no reindeer, but there were cats
Ring, happy bells, across the snow
Perhaps the future is a tiny flame
My soul instantly ignores what was there before
Stuck in a frozen state of shame
When your cheeks are wet from weeping on your own
Aflame among the rest
I just want somebody to hold me through the night
It is December and nobody asked if I was ready
…
These sparklets were taken from the following texts: A child’s Christmas in Wales, Dylan Thomas; Ring Out, Wild Bells, Alfred, Lord Tennyson; Winter Without You, Sarah Kay; The Cold Swedish Winter, Jens Lekman; Green and Red, Oisin Challoner; En Liten Konstnär, Nils Ferlin (translated by Urban); Gässen Flytta, Dan Andersson (translated by Urban); Untitled, Jakob Willerström
This is a link to the video Keri made for her Nov 14th Keynote to the Transforming Higher Education for the Future (IAU) Conference in Puebla, Mexico. Based on her longer inaugural lecture (see below) she talks about how the interdependence of the SDGs requires universities to come up with new cross-institutional responses, and makes some proposals for what these might be.
Addressing climate change will require partnerships across all sectors of society. This is a film of Keri’s workshop on Campus Gotland exploring how universities and communities might work together to address climate change.
It draws on Keri’s work as Leadership Fellow for the Connected Communities Programme which was a six-year-long programme of collaboration between academics and partners outside the university – local government, industry, charities, voluntary sector groups with over 300 projects across the UK. The main findings from this programme are here alongside a series of literature reviews providing surveys of the main approaches to co-production.
Another project – looking at how universities are failing to engage with and learn from minority ethnic communities – has produced a report and a set of important principles and guidance for universities seeking to create more diverse partnerships and collaborations.
Hur kan vi leva tillsammans med Fyrisån?
In collaboration with Uppsala Art Museum and Ateljéföreningen, Hospitalet. An artistic and experimental workshop that recognizes the rights of nature by giving voice to the various creatures of the Fyrisån. Led by Pella Thiel and Henrik Hallgren, from Nature Rights Sweden.
Register latest November 15!
Watch Professor Keri Facer’s inaugural lecture on renewing the European university’s mission in a changing climate.
An early version of the text of this talk is also available here
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