The Anna Sethne Honorary Lecture 2025: Iveta Silova

The programme might be subject to changes.  

We serve coffee and tea from 11.45.

12.00-14.30

• The Anna Sethne Honorary Lecture 2025: Iveta Silova: Education and Planetary Futures: Storying Worlds Beyond the Western Horizon.
• Panel discussion. The participants will be announced later.

14.30-15.30

• Reception with entertainment and light refreshments.  

Iveta Silova is Professor and Associate Dean of Global Engagement at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University, USA. She works in the field of comparative and international education, and has been president of the Comparative and International Education Society since 2020.

Silova research centers around such topics as post-socialism, childhood, social inequality and education in an international perspective, with particular emphasis on Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

Her two ongoing research projects concern sustainability and (post)socialist childhood, respectively, both with a spotlight on education and knowledge models.

Silova is a highly active and interdisciplinary oriented researcher, who is widely cited and has received several awards. In addition to this, she has extensive experience in international aid and development, with particular emphasis on Eastern Europe and Central Asia. She has also worked as an adviser and program employee in various UN organisations, including UNESCO. 

In a world brimming with a multitude of stories, modern schooling has served to systematically command and control single, totalizing narratives. Among these narratives is the story of the Anthropocene, which places humans above nature, praises fossil economies over planetary interdependence and wellbeing, and champions the idea of infinite growth on a finite planet.  

This storyline has led us to a dead end, destroying the ecosystems that have sustained life on Earth for millions of years and threatening the survival of both the planet and people. Changing the story of the Anthropocene requires a critical interrogation of the dominant education narratives and the so-called ‘best practices’ that reinforce a logic of ontological individualism and competition through pedagogy, reinscribe human exceptionalism and supremacy across curriculum, and limit education goals to workforce supply for economic growth at the expense of the broader planetary concerns that demand our collective attention and care.  

As we move deeper into the Anthropocene, our survival depends on our capacity to bring into focus alternative stories—both new and existing ones— that reshape our relationship with each other and with the Earth. This talk will discuss the role and responsibility of education in (re)storying worlds by foregrounding alternatives within and beyond the Western horizon – from the “pluriversal” frameworks associated with the epistemologies of the South to land-based Indigenous ontologies, African cosmologies, postsocialist and decolonial frameworks, Asian philosophical traditions, and alternatives within the Western scholarship, including ecofeminism and posthumanities.

Stepping beyond the Western horizon compels us to engage with the multi-layered challenge of unlearning single, totalizing narratives stemming from Western (humanist) thought, while simultaneously cultivating the capacity to relearn our profound interdependence with one another and the ecosystems that sustain us. By weaving theoretical insights with empirical data, artistic expression, and practical examples, we will explore how education could be (re)imagined as a practice of relationality, offering new pathways to collectively reshape our planetary futures. 

The Anna Sethne Honorary Lecture is an annual guest lecture intended to inspire the integration of education and research with an emphasis on diversity, sustainability and interdisciplinary aspects.

Read more about the Anna Sethne Honorary Lecture.

• Anne Waldrop, Professor at the Department of International Studies and Interpreting (Head of committee)
• Olav Hovdelien, Professor at the Department of Early Childhood Education 
• Kim Gunnar Helsvig, Professor at the Department of Primary and Secondary Teacher Education 
• Veerle Garrels, Professor at the Department of Vocational Teacher Education
• Sigridur Vilhjalmsdottir, Head of Section at the National Centre for Multicultural Education (NAFO)