GELIFES Seminars - Lucy Avraamidou

Lucy Avraamidou (UG Centre for Learning and Teaching)

Learning to live with the world

The role of science (education)

The world is facing a socioscientific polycrisis due to the concurrent and interconnected crises, such as climate change, military conflicts and genocides, food and energy shortages, poverty, global health issues, and AI colonisation, among others. As the global order faces this socioscientific polycrisis, science (education) cannot remain unaffected. Science education is called upon to engage critically with the societal and educational changes driven by geopolitical instability, the growing influence of the AI-BigTech companies on education, and the climate crisis. Such critical engagement requires reconsideration of reform efforts, a redefinition of STEM higher education for the purpose of learning to live with the world instead of dominating it. In this talk, I will argue about the urgency of re-imagining science education at the university with a focus on bringing about social change/justice and provide examples of related empirical work done in the context of 2 EU-Horizon projects, one addressing issues of AI biases and discrimination and the other one researching urban transitions.

Biosketch:
Prof. Avraamidou is the Director of the Centre for Learning and Teaching at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and the President of the European Science Education Association (ESERA). Shereceived her PhD from the Pennsylvania State University and has worked in the UK and in Cyprus, where she was born and raised, prior to her appointment in Groningen. Her research is associated with theoretical and empirical explorations of what it means to widen and diversify STEM participation in through the lens of science identity.