Possibility seminars - Autumn Series
Meet the members
For this 2024 autumn’s seminars, we are inviting key members of the network to discuss their research in a highly interactive session where we will be inviting feedback and discussion on ideas in progress. It's your chance to shape the way the network is developing.
We really look forward to seeing you there!!
October 4th
3pm GMT
October 11th
10am GMT
October 18th
3pm GMT
October 25th
10am GMT
November 1st
3pm GMT
November 8th
10am GMT
November 22nd
3pm GMT
November 29th
10am GMT
December 13th
3pm GMT
Noah Sobe - A curious chapter in the history of human potential
Prof Noah W. Sobe studies the history and future of education. His recently published historical study of the global dissemination of the work of an obscure early-20th-century American art educator may seem an odd choice for a PSN seminar. However, Noah argues that we see in this unusual episode an interest in understanding human potential and how it might be developed. We can expect the seminar to explore the relationship between possibility and human potential, especially as that has been variously understood in different times and places.
David Rousell - Encounters between young children and the Aboriginal forest
David is a writer, educator, artist, and researcher working on the unceded lands of the Kulin Nation in Naarm (Melbourne) Australia. His research focuses on re-imagining cities under conditions of climate change, urban super-diversity, and the situated urgencies of decolonisation. This work is transdisciplinary, negotiating diverse encounters between Indigenous, continental, and diasporic philosophies of nature, relationality, sentience, and place. In 2017 David established Local Alternatives (www.localalternatives.org), an international platform for re-imagining cities through place-based research and artistic co-production with children and young people. His recent books include Immersive Cartography and Post-Qualitative Inquiry (Routledge, 2021), Doing Rebellious Research (Brill, 2022), and Posthuman Research Playspaces: Climate Child Imaginaries (Routledge, 2023).
Ryszard Praszkier - The Meaning of Paradoxical Thinking for Making the Impossible Possible
Ryszard Praszkier, Ph.D. (Warsaw, Poland) has authored and co-authored numerous academic publications about social entrepreneurs and the ways they have identified innovative solutions to seemingly insurmountable problems. He is a professor emeritus at the University of Warsaw where he conducts research on peaceful transitions, including social-change processes facilitated by social entrepreneurs. He innovated the concept of perceiving insurmountable challenges as doable (coining the name “possibilitivity” – portmanteau of possible and creativity); also proposed the concept of Peace-Oriented Mindset. Moreover – developed evaluation tools for both. His recent Cambridge University Press book “Working Wonders: How to Make the Impossible Happen” illustrates how some individuals successfully address seemingly impossible” challenges, and how the reader can follow this path. Dr. Praszkier has worked for nearly 30 years for Ashoka: Everyone a Changemaker global organization, which empowers social entrepreneurs. He conducted over 200 interviews with social innovators in nearly all continents. He is a licensed psychotherapist and psychotherapy supervisor. In the 1980s, Dr. Praszkier participated in the Polish underground peaceful Solidarity Movement and wrote, under a false name, a manual for Solidarity activists titled “How to survive police interrogation.” He later acted as a consultant for Solidarity candidates during Poland’s first free election in 1989.
Dave Camilleri - Exploring creativity in BMX trail construction
Dr Dave Camilleri has been immersed in BMX trail scene for decades both in Australia and Europe. Dave dropped out of high school but returned to study Philosophy and Linguistics as a mature age student. Upon leaving university Dave worked as secondary school teacher before starting a PhD investigating creativity in disengaged adolescents within formal schooling. He is a lecturer and researcher at the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Education. His teaching and research interests are in youth studies, wellbeing, and creativity, and BMX!
Vicky Karaiskou- Seeing is Believing... or Limiting? The Impact of visuality on Imagination and Change
Dr. Vicky Karaiskou is an Associate Professor at the Open University of Cyprus, where she is also Chairholder of the UNESCO Chair in Visual Anticipation and Futures Literacy towards Visual Literacy. She has served as a visiting professor at universities in Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, France, and Sweden. In 2014, she was nominated an Andrew J. Mellon Distinguished Visitor-in-Residence in the Fine Arts at Macalester College, USA. Her research focuses on visuality, visual literacy, arts and power, and the ramifications of cultural memory and identity politics, and explores the profound implications of cultural and national visual narratives on the shaping of societal perceptions. She is research partner in European projects (e.g. Slow Memory COST Action) and research associations (e.g. Memory Studies Association; Council for European Studies) and she publishes in international scientific journals. Her the short film Trojan Women re-imagined and BABELproject are outcomes of her current research on the “Futures of the Past” field and make as well part of her UNESCO project on Visual Literacy. The short film Trojan Women re-imagined was included in the official screening of four (4) international short film festivals; was semi-finalist in another; and got an Honorable Mention during the 2024 London Greek Film Festival.
Raffi Duymedjian - The Rise of Indeterminacy: How to Prepare for the Unexpected?
Raffi Duymedjian is Associate Professor at Grenoble École de Management in the People, Organisation and Society Department. His research focuses on a theory of bricolage observed from different angles (incremental innovation, managerial bricolage, bricolage in the cultural industries) and, as part of the Mindfulness, Well-being at Work and Economic Peace chair, on the conditions for wealth creation in a situation of economic non-violence. He is the co-author of the concept of creative preservation and his recent work focuses on exnovation, meritocracy, and entrepreneurial ethics to preserve and amplify the dignity of the things-in-the-world.
Izabela Lebuda- A systematic framework of creative metacognition
Dr. Izabela Lebuda is an Associate Professor at the University of Wroclaw, with a keen interest in the psychology of creativity. Her research focuses on creative self-beliefs, the influence of culture and media on creativity, and the application of creative thinking in education. Currently, one of her main academic interests is exploring the possibility of intentionally managing one’s own creative process. Dr. Lebuda has published extensively in international journals and has been involved in interdisciplinary projects examining the connections between creativity, education, and technology. She also serves as Associate Editor for Creativity: Theories – Research – Applications, Possibility Studies and Society, and Thinking Skills and Creativity. In recognition of her contributions to creativity research, she received the prestigious Daniel E. Berlyne Award from Division 10 of the American Psychological Association.
James Kaufman & Dana Rowe- Lessons in Creativity from Musical Theatre Characters
Dana P. Rowe is a New York-based American composer and musical director whose works have been performed in NYC, the West End, and around the world. His off-Broadway musical, Zombie Prom, has reached cult status and was filmed starring RuPaul and Katy Mixon. There have been nearly 3,000 different productions around the world, with a major West End revival in the works. Dana’s next two musicals were produced by Sir Cameron Mackintosh. The Fix premiered at the Donmar Warehouse, directed by Academy Award winner Sam Mendes. The Witches of Eastwick premiered at Drury Lane on the West End. It subsequently has had major productions all over the world, from the United States to Japan to Russia. A star-studded one-night-only at the Sondheim Theatre in London was performed in 2022. Both The Fix and The Witches of Eastwick were nominated for four Olivier awards each (including Best New Musical) and, subsequently, Washington’s Helen Hayes Award. His work has been funded by the Edgerton Foundation for New American Plays and the National Endowment for the Arts. As a certified personal development coach, he specializes in working with both individual creative professionals, leaders, and organizations (including Amazon, Sony Music Entertainment, Disney, and Warner Brothers).
James C. Kaufman is a Professor of Educational Psychology at the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut. He has written or edited more than 50 books, including The Creativity Advantage (Cambridge, 2023), Creativity 101 (2nd Ed., Springer, 2016), and the Cambridge Handbook of Creativity (with Robert Sternberg; 2019). James has won many awards, including Mensa’s research award, the Torrance Award from the National Association for Gifted Children, and APA’s Berlyne, Arnheim, and Farnsworth awards. He co-founded two major journals, Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts and Psychology of Popular Media Culture, and is currently the senior associate editor of Creativity Research Journal. He has tested Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s creativity on CNN, written the book and lyrics to Discovering Magenta (which played NYC and has a cast album), and appeared onscreen, complete with white lab coat, in the comic book documentary Independents.
Zachary Peck & Elmo Feiten - Constructive constraints: On the role of chance and complexity in artistic creativity
Zachary Peck is a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at the University of Cincinnati. His research focuses on cognition and agency in natural, artificial, and social systems. He is particularly interested in cases where the distinction between what is natural, artificial, and social is blurred. He is also a bluegrass musician and has philosophical interests in the role interpersonal and bodily coordination plays in improvisational contexts.
Tim Elmo Feiten is an Assistant Teaching Professor at The Pennsylvania State University and conducts research situated broadly within philosophy of science, with a focus on the sciences of life, mind, and artificial intelligence. His work brings the history and philosophy of science into dialogue with other fields, especially continental philosophy. He has used the philosophy of embodied cognitive science to develop new readings of Jakob von Uexküll and Max Stirner, and to ask questions about the relationships between art, science, technology, and society. He also does research on public engagement with science and the question of how AI research could be democratized, as well as pursuing methodological questions about scientific modeling in biology and the social sciences (in particular game theoretic models of cultural evolution).
Past seminars
May 16th
10am GMT
Antti Rajala
Details upcoming
May 23rd
3pm GMT
Roy Baumeister - In what sense are possibilities real?
Roy F. Baumeister is president of the International Positive Psychology Association, as well as professor of psychology (emeritus) at the University of Queensland, with ongoing connections to Florida State University and Constructor University Bremen (Germany). He received his PhD in experimental social psychology from Princeton University in 1978 and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in sociology at the University of California at Berkeley. He has over 700 publications, and his 45 books include Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty, The Cultural Animal, Meanings of Life, and the New York Times bestsellerWillpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. As of February 2024, Google Scholar tallies that his works have been cited over 280,000 times in the scientific literature, with annual tallies routinely approaching 20,000 and an H-index of 206.His research interests include self and identity, belongingness and interpersonal rejection, finding meaning in life, sexuality, aggression, self-control and self-esteem, uncertainty, addiction, decision-making, and thinking about the future.
May 30th
10am GMT
Nicolas Benjamin Verger - Are creativity researchers contributing to the worsening of the ecological crisis?
Nicolas B. Verger holds a PhD in applied psychology from Glasgow Caledonian University (2023). His doctoral thesis addressed “The Effects of Parent-Child Creative Activities on Early Childhood Resilience: A Multi-Methods Study of Cross-Cultural Differences and Similarities” (dir. Dr. Kareena McAloney-Kocaman; Dr. Julie Roberts; Dr. Jane Guiller). Motivated by interdisciplinary outlooks from psychology, philosophy, development economics, sociology, anthropology, his work recently focused on the link between creation/creative practices and the preservation of the ecosphere. Nicolas is also a freelance translator. He translated into French, Andy Field’s “An Adventure in Statistics” and Paul Silvia’s “How to write a lot”.
June 6th
3pm GMT
Pam Burnard - Why does the pluralism of creativities matter?
What is the material-discursive capacity of more-than-human and nonhuman things to impact producing the possibility of diverse creativities and of what the pluralism of creativities can be. Given the extent that both creativities’ interdependence with a vast range of forces, including digital technologies and artificial intelligences which have exponentially opened up new possibilities, can we be confident that the ecology of creativities will continue to provide the practice of producing the possibility of creativities or what Barad calls ‘boundary making practices’?
Pamela Burnard is Professor of Arts, Creativities and Educations at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge. She has published widely with 20 books and over 100 articles which advance the theory and practice of multiple creativities across education sectors including early years, primary, secondary, further and higher education, through to creative and cultural industries. She is co-editor of the journal Thinking Skills and Creativity. Her most recent co-edited books include ‘Why Sciences and Arts Creativities Matter’ (Brill-i-Sense, 2020), ‘Doing Rebellious Research in and Beyond the Academy’’ (Brill-i-Sense, 2022), ‘Unlocking Research: Sculpting New Creativities (Routledge, 2022) and ‘The Routledge Companion to Musical Creativities’ (Routledge, 2023). Her most recent coauthored journal article is ‘Sensing bodies: Transdisciplinary enactments for educational future making’ which is soon to be published in Digital Culture and Education Journal (2023). Current funded projects include ‘Choices, Chances and Transitions around Creative Further and Higher Education’ (The Nuffield Trust), ‘Contemporary Urban Musics Inclusion Network’ (Arts and Humanities Research Council), ‘Creative Learning in Higher Education Teaching of BioEconomics’ (CL4Bio) (Erasmus); Drumming and Healing (The Nuffield Trust). She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), Fellow of the Chartered College of Teaching, UK and Fellow of the International Society for the Study of Creativity and Innovation (ISSCI).
June 13th
10am GMT
Brady Wagoner - Are conspiracies the dark side of possibility or is there more to them than meets the eye?
Brady Wagoner is Professor of Psychology at the University of Copenhagen, Aalborg University and Oslo New University College. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge on a Gates Cambridge Scholarship. His research aims to develop a dynamic cultural psychology, which he has applied to such topics as memory, social change, the public understanding of science and the history of psychology. His books include The Constructive Mind: Bartlett’s Psychology in Reconstruction (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and Handbook of Culture and Memory (Oxford University Press, 2018). In 2021, he received the prestigious Humboldt Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
January 25th 2024 - 10am GMT - Doing ethics, and the possible - Samantha Copeland
January 25th 2024 - 10am GMT - Doing ethics, and the possible - Samantha Copeland
Abstract This paper begins with the paradox of teaching ethics, that we teach ethical theory in the form of general rules whereas the practice of ethics occurs in dynamic and uncertain contexts. I argue, utilizing literature that highlights the role of anticipation and relationships in ethical practice, that the goal of ethics is not consensus or agreement about what rule to follow, in a particular situation nor in general. That is, doing ethics is not about rule-making or decision-making; rather, this paper provides arguments from philosophical ethics as well as ethics education for understanding ethical practice as exploring the possible together. Drawing from these diverse perspectives, the paper contributes to discussions about the nature of ethics itself and how we should theorize about it. Finally, conclusions related to how an ethics of the possible could be taught and why it should be are offered.
Abstract This paper begins with the paradox of teaching ethics, that we teach ethical theory in the form of general rules whereas the practice of ethics occurs in dynamic and uncertain contexts. I argue, utilizing literature that highlights the role of anticipation and relationships in ethical practice, that the goal of ethics is not consensus or agreement about what rule to follow, in a particular situation nor in general. That is, doing ethics is not about rule-making or decision-making; rather, this paper provides arguments from philosophical ethics as well as ethics education for understanding ethical practice as exploring the possible together. Drawing from these diverse perspectives, the paper contributes to discussions about the nature of ethics itself and how we should theorize about it. Finally, conclusions related to how an ethics of the possible could be taught and why it should be are offered.
February 1st 2024 - 3pm GMT - The possibility of possibility: Between ethnography and social theory - Daniel M. Knight and Gabriela Manley
Abstract This paper considers how ‘the possibility of possibility’ as freedom of choice and audacious obligation towards newness found in philosophical works of such scholars as Søren Kierkegaard and Michel Serres is tempered by socio-historical circumstance. Ethnographic material from Scotland and Greece demonstrates contrasting ways that possibilities are impacted by the various timespaces that open or foreclose pathways to the future. Possibility shapes notions of the Self and Society since people are propelled to (in)action by way of recurring and reinterpreted pasts, are pulled through futural horizons in present-day practice or become stuck on the threshold of becoming. In the context of the independence movement in Scotland, possibility plays an active role in political life of independence campaigners with a feedback loop between past-present-future providing momentum to actualise the possible. In Greece, a decade of crisis has foreclosed previously possible futures with people feeling stuck in a repeating spin-cycle where horizons of the possible cannot be crossed. The ethnographic examples showcase how the multiplicities of human life affect the possibility of possibility and how visions of the elsewhere, elsewhen, and otherwise emerge in more or less ‘positive’ scenarios.
February 8th 2024 - 10am GMT - Scientific understanding through big data: From ignorance to insights to understanding - María del Rosario Martínez-Ordaz
Abstract Here I argue that scientists can achieve some understanding of both the products of big data implementation as well as of the target phenomenon to which they are expected to refer—even when these products were obtained through essentially epistemically opaque processes. The general aim of the paper is to provide a road map for how this is done; going from the use of big data to epistemic opacity (Sec. 2), from epistemic opacity to ignorance (Sec. 3), from ignorance to insights (Sec. 4), and finally, from insights to understanding (Sec. 5, 6)
February 15th 2024 - 3pm GMT - Another future - Andrew Pickering
Abstract This essay discusses the macrodynamics of cultural change. Drawing on the history of science, I offer an analysis of revolutionary transformation in terms of the waxing and waning of traditions of practice, in which marginal traditions become mainstream and vice versa. I apply this model to the Anthropocene, identifying dualist traditions of mastery and domination as currently mainstream and nondualist traditions of acting-with, exemplified by indigenous approaches to the environment and by cybernetics, as marginal. My concern is with the growth and unification of the latter as a path to another future, and I point to the need for the establishment of symbiotic relations between them, which has yet to come to pass.
February 2nd 2024 - 10am GMT - Anecdote, fiction, and statistics: The three poles of empirical methodology - Michael Wood
Abstract This article clarifies the role and value of three types of evidence used in empirical research – anecdotes derived from case studies or small samples of data, fictions (including both thought experiments and works of art such as novels and plays) and statistics. The conclusion is that all three have an important part to play. Many conventional stereotypes are deeply unhelpful: contrary to the usual assumptions, science is often dependent on anecdote and fiction for exploring possibilities, qualitative research is often statistical in spirit, and social science is more likely to lead to useful conclusions about future possibilities if it draws on anecdotes and fictions.
February 29th 2024 - 3pm GMT - Imagining the impossible: An act of radical hope - Loes Damhof and Jitske Gulmans
Abstract Even the most determined optimists among us cannot deny we are living in dark times, with raging wars and the effects of climate change upon us. A pandemic has left us feeling uncertain about our futures, polarization has pressured social discourse. Our assumptions of the future are being challenged: even what we took for granted now seems uncertain. And instead of asking: how did we get here? We are left with the question: what made us think we would never get here? If the unimaginable suddenly becomes a reality, then what is left to imagine? Is it still worth being hopeful? It appears that we are not only suffering from the poverty of imagination, but also from the poverty of hope. But what if imagination and hope are inherently connected? In this essay we propose that we cannot be hopeful without rethinking our images of the future, in which imagining the impossible turns out to become a necessity: a radical act of hope.
March 7th 2024 - 10am GMT- Counterfactual curiosity: Motivated thinking about what might have been - Lily Fitzgibbon and Kou Murayama
Abstract Counterfactual information, information about what might have been, forms the content of counterfactual thoughts and emotions like regret and relief. Recent research suggests that human adults and children, as well as rhesus monkeys, demonstrate ‘counterfactual curiosity’: they are motivated to seek out counterfactual information after making decisions. Based on contemporary theories of curiosity and information seeking and a broad range of empirical literature, we suggest multiple heterogeneous psychological processes that contribute to people's motivation for counterfactual information. This includes processes that are identified in the curiosity literature more generally—the potential use of counterfactual information for adaptive decision making (its long-term instrumental value) and the drive to reduce uncertainty. Additionally, we suggest that counterfactual information may be particularly alluring because of its role in causal reasoning; its relationship with prediction and decision making; and its potential to fulfil emotion regulation and self-serving goals. Some future directions have been suggested, including investigating the role of individual differences in counterfactual curiosity on learning and wellbeing.
March 14th 2024 - 3pm GMT - Welcome to possibility studies - Arturo Escobar
Abstract A main goal of Possibility Studies is to explore the complex cultural-political work of imagining the future(s). As this brief note argues, this task is deeply shaped at present by the narrow notions of reality, and hence of the possible, inherited from Western modernity. Becoming aware of the onto-epistemic foundations of modernity thus becomes essential for the collective journey into the reinvention of possibility.
March 21st 2024 - 10am GMT - Possibility Thinking Scale: An initial psychometric exploration - Vlad Glaveanu et al.