Format/Structure

An interactive, round table format, for the sharing insights, experiences and practices. 5 short talks (5 minutes each) invited to frame discussion.

Long Abstract

In political ecology practice, we routinely navigate and narrate the dystopian terrain of loss, damage, violence and uncertainty. As scholars, we must find safe ways to bear witness and act. As educators, who are apparently “teaching at twilight” (Afzaal 2023), we must hold space for our students to grieve, learn, analyse – and, most importantly – build skills for fostering collective agency and hope. Paulo Freire showed in his “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” (1968), that educators can play a crucial role in awakening students as empowered collaborators, able to make visible and challenge systems of oppression. In our time of climate crisis, ecological degradation and democratic erosion, new and equally transformative pedagogies are needed. For example, we need pedagogies of hope, which treat hope not as a “warm, fuzzy emotion” but as “a way of thinking – a cognitive process” (Brown 2021). In political ecology, a similar notion of “hope as practice” suggests ways in which collective and networked action can help to generate desirable futures, which build on critical understandings of our present circumstances (Beban et al. 2024). This approach to hope is valid in our field sites, as well as in the classroom. Indeed, political ecology is a field in which these two domains can inform each other.

This panel invites contributions that explore the stories, challenges and potential opportunities of teaching in a time of crisis. We ask: How are political ecologists building new pedagogies for hope, solidarity and community? How do we empower students, and foster new kinds of awareness and approaches for navigating a future of unprecedented challenges? What resources, practices and techniques are being tried? How can we address some students’ feelings of anxiety and hopelessness, to reinvigorate possibilities for the future?

This Roundtable has 8 pending paper proposals.
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