Dean's Keynote: Professor Maria Ojala

You are invited to our next Dean's Keynote Series event, on Thursday, 12th December 2024.

The Dean's Keynote Series theme for 2024 is 'Disrupting and transforming education'. We welcome all to attend this most important series of events.

Abstract

Hopelessness and helplessness about the global future, not least regarding climate change, seem to increase among young people. Therefore, many argue that we need to promote a constructive form of hope in, for example, climate-change communication and education. In this presentation, I argue that hope is not only positive visons about the future, pathways to reach this future, and related positive emotions. Hope is also about facing and coping constructively with the “negative”, both in the form of anxieties about the future and the boarder tensions and ambivalences one can experience when trying to live in a more climate-friendly way in a not so sustainable society.

In addition, hope needs to include a critical emotional awareness about that these emotions and border tensions are not only individual phenomenon, but are also influenced by social norms, discourses about emotions, and power. Therefore, it becomes vital for educators to focus also on these factors when teaching about climate change and other sustainability problems. By relating to empirical research with adolescents and young adults about climate change, engagement, emotions, and coping practical implications for education for sustainable development are discussed.  

Maria Ojala is Professor in socio-ecological resilience at University of Oulu, Finland (from August 1, 2024) and Associate Professor of psychology at Örebro University, Sweden. She has a master’s exam from Lund University, Sweden and a PhD in psychology from Örebro University. Maria has also worked as an Assistant Professor at Uppsala University at the Department of Education. From August 2020 to July 2024 she was one of the research directors for CESSS (Center for Environmental and Sustainability Social Science) at Örebro University. Maria's main research interest centers around how young people think, feel, act, learn and communicate regarding global environmental issues, with a special focus on climate change. She has published articles about topics like climate-change worry/anxiety and associations with civic engagement and subjective wellbeing as well as the importance of constructive hope and critical emotional awareness in learning and education.