By bringing WEIRD’s commitments to intersectionality, crip and queer theory, decolonial approaches, and transformative practice into dialogue with broader international scholarship on transformation and transformative change, the course strengthens the integration of WEIRD research into teaching at the University of Helsinki.
Sustainability transformations are often understood through system dynamics, governance innovations, or technological transitions. This course expands that frame by placing questions of justice, positionality, and knowledge plurality at the centre.
Across seven weeks, students engage with theories of socio-ecological and socio-technical change, environmental justice histories, decolonial and Indigenous perspectives, and disability, trans, and queer approaches to sustainability.
The curriculum also introduces key WEIRD themes (such as: relationality, liminality, resistance, prefiguration, and unmaking) as analytical tools for understanding transformative possibilities and their limits.
A two-part Transformative Change Lab, facilitated by WEIRD researchers, allows students to work hands-on with a wide variety of transformative initiatives and experiences, from arts-based projects to community practices and activists´ projects. This component reflects WEIRD’s emphasis on embodied, practical, situated, and creative approaches to researching transformation.
The responsible teacher is Guido Caniglia, with significant contributions from WEIRD postdocs and PhD researchers Maija Koivisto, Ely/iott Mermans, Athulya Purushothaman, and Mae van Veldhoven.
This article was written by the PI of the WEIRD project Guido Caniglia.