Laura Formenti
Unthinking conformity: dialoguing as questioning
Prof. Laura Formenti, full professor in General and Social Pedagogy at Milano Bicocca University, Italy, does research in the education, training and guidance of adults and older adults, vocational training for educators, social workers and health professionals, and family pedagogy. Former Chair of ESREA and of the Italian Universities’ Network for Lifelong Learning, her approach is systemic, participatory, dialogic, and transformative. She uses ethnographic, narrative, aesthetic and cooperative methods with a critical interpretative framework, often entailing involvement of learners in action-research and intervention. She has explored original and new methodologies with individuals, groups, organizations and complex systems, to study as well as transform knowledge, practices, and perspectives of meaning at a micro, meso and macro-level. Among over 170 publications, the book „Transforming Perspectives in Lifelong Learning and Adult Education. A Dialogue“, written with Linden West, received the 2019 Cyril O. Houle Award of AAACE.
Tetyana Hoggan-Kloubert
Carrying Loss and Finding Home: Migration Dialogues in Adult Education
Tetyana Hoggan-Kloubert is ‘akademische Rätin’ (Associate Professor) at the University of Augsburg (Germany), co-editor of the International Journal of Lifelong Education, co-editor of The Good Society: A Journal of Civic Studies, and co-director of the Institute for Civic Studies and Learning for Democracy. After having studied in Ukraine and Germany, Dr. Hoggan-Kloubert researches migration, civic education (and indoctrination) in Eastern Europe, Western Europe and the United States. As a visiting researcher, she conducted research at various US universities (Harvard University, Tufts University). She has published 6 books and numerous articles and chapters. Since 2022, she is the founder and director of the NGO German-Ukrainian Dialogue, which aims to create spaces of encounter and democratic supportive structures for those in vulnerable positions.
Tomáš Samek
Dialogue and Democracy: Can Education Deepen the Connection?
Tomáš Samek is a linguistic and cultural anthropologist specializing in the complex interconnections between consciousness, communication, and social cohesion. His research explores the diverse ways in which everyday speech relates to both individual and collective awareness, including phenomena such as the interactional construction of social identities and the relationship between media and group imagination. He also examines linguistic expressions of social identity in Czech-and German-speaking countries. Tomáš Samek teaches at the Faculty of Education, Charles University in Prague, and is the author of the book This Land is Our Land: Czech and German Public Spaces from a Deictic Perspective.
