Transformative Education: Lessons from a new eco-campus

The latest IPCC reports called for a radical transformation of the ways our economies and societies are structured in order to avoid runaway climate change and ensure a liveable planet. Universities, as civil society institutions which constitute key economic, social and political actors, are part of that transformation. Throughout the world, new higher education initiatives such as eco-campuses are springing up to meet today’s unprecedented challenges. The Campus de la Transition (‘Transition Campus’) is an eco-campus near Paris. It is a place of teaching, research and experimentation created in 2018 by a collective of academics, entrepreneurs and students united by a common desire: to promote an ecological, economic and just transition, towards regenerative and solidarity economies and societies.

In this lecture, Professor Cécile Renouard, co-founder of the Campus, will present the transdisciplinary methodology and the teaching practices and pedagogies designed and implemented by the Campus, especially the ‘head-body-heart’ pedagogy and the methodology set out in the Great Transition Handbook. This framework aims at inspiring the transformation of courses and curricula in higher education and to spur collective responsibility at different scales. The seminar will explore ways in which postgraduate education at the University of Oxford, and at ODID, can rise to the challenges of transformative education to respond to climate change.