Pedagogies of hope in higher education
Capturing visions of hopeful pedagogies
An online symposium
9-20 November 2026
Pedagogies of hope in higher education
Capturing visions of hopeful pedagogies
An online symposium
9 - 20 November 2026
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What does hope look like in your work as an educator in higher education? Hope can be difficult to hold onto in higher education right now. As educators, we are working amid ecological crisis, democratic erosion, institutional pressures, and growing uncertainty about the future. This symposium is an invitation to reflect together on how we conceptualise and practice hope in our teaching, what sustains hope, and what forms of hope feel possible, or impossible, in higher education today.
The Hope Collective is a group of scholars and educators interested in the possibilities and limits of pedagogies of hope in times of crisis. For this symposium, we want to bring together a wide range of experiences and perspectives on what hope looks like in higher education work: practices that try to cultivate hope, but also accounts that question when hope is useful, who gets to practise it, and what its limits might be.
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What does hope look like in your work as an educator in higher education? Hope can be difficult to hold onto in higher education right now. As educators, we are working amid ecological crisis, democratic erosion, institutional pressures, and growing uncertainty about the future. This symposium is an invitation to reflect together on how we conceptualise and practice hope in our teaching, what sustains hope, and what forms of hope feel possible, or impossible, in higher education today.
The Hope Collective is a group of scholars and educators interested in the possibilities and limits of pedagogies of hope in times of crisis. For this symposium, we want to bring together a wide range of experiences and perspectives on what hope looks like in higher education work: practices that try to cultivate hope, but also accounts that question when hope is useful, who gets to practise it, and what its limits might be.
How to take part
We invite you to contribute one photograph, artwork, drawing, collage, or other image that says something about how you understand or practise hope as an educator, in the broadest sense. Alongside your image, we ask for either a short written reflection or a two- to three-minute audio or video explanation. This might tell the story behind the image, describe a particular practice or experience, raise a question, or reflect on something you are still trying to work out.
Your contribution does not need to be a polished example of “good practice.” We are just as interested in uncertainty, difficulty, tensions, experiments and things that have not quite worked as we are in examples of things that have worked.
Please use an image you have created yourself, have permission to use, or that is available under an appropriate Creative Commons licence.
Who is this for? Educators, professional staff, students, and others interested in thinking about hope and higher education. You do not need to already work on hope as a research topic.
How will it work? Across the two weeks of the symposium, participants’ images and stories will build into a collective online collage. People will be able to look through and respond to contributions in their own time, alongside live keynote conversations, discussions and creative sessions. We hope the format will make it possible for people in different places and time zones to take part, and for conversations to grow out of the images, stories and questions people bring.
Timeline:
15 August 2026 – Call for participation opens
15 September 2026 – Participation confirmed
26 October 2026 – Images and accompanying text/audio/video due
9–20 November 2026 – Online symposium
Cost: Free
How to take part
We invite you to contribute one photograph, artwork, drawing, collage, or other image that says something about how you understand or practise hope as an educator, in the broadest sense. Alongside your image, we ask for either a short written reflection or a two- to three-minute audio or video explanation. This might tell the story behind the image, describe a particular practice or experience, raise a question, or reflect on something you are still trying to work out.
Your contribution does not need to be a polished example of “good practice.” We are just as interested in uncertainty, difficulty, tensions, experiments and things that have not quite worked as we are in examples of things that have worked.
Please use an image you have created yourself, have permission to use, or that is available under an appropriate Creative Commons licence.
Who is this for? Educators, professional staff, students, and others interested in thinking about hope and higher education. You do not need to already work on hope as a research topic.
How will it work? Across the two weeks of the symposium, participants’ images and stories will build into a collective online collage. People will be able to look through and respond to contributions in their own time, alongside live keynote conversations, discussions and creative sessions. We hope the format will make it possible for people in different places and time zones to take part, and for conversations to grow out of the images, stories and questions people bring.
Timeline:
15 August 2026 – Call for participation opens
15 September 2026 – Participation confirmed
26 October 2026 – Images and accompanying text/audio/video due
9–20 November 2026 – Online symposium
Cost: Free
Ideas you might explore
Your contribution might connect with one or more of the themes below (or take us somewhere else entirely!).
What does hope mean in your educational work? Where does it come from, and how is it shaped by different cultural, political, intellectual, or spiritual traditions?
Where and how is hope practised? How are educators building new pedagogies for hope embedded in course design, classroom relationships, assessment, or other spaces of your teaching practice, and what does this look like in online or asynchronous learning spaces?
How does hope work collectively? How is hope being built through relationships, solidarity, shared struggle, mutual support, or action with others?
How does hope move beyond the university? What happens when teaching and learning are embedded in relationships with communities, whānau, iwi, activist groups, workplaces, environments, or places?
How is hope understood and practised through Indigenous and decolonial ways of knowing? What might these perspectives ask us to rethink about education, the future, responsibility, power, and the kinds of hope we value?
What might institutional hope look like? How can leadership, administration, policy, programme design, or institutional activism create openings for change? What do higher education institutions (need to) do to enable or disable hope and hope-based practices?
Who gets to practise hope, and from what position? How is hope shaped by precarity, casualisation, workload, marginalisation, career stage, institutional power, or uneven access to resources?
What emotions sit alongside hope? How do educators and students work with grief, anger, fear, exhaustion, joy, care, or uncertainty?
When and/or how is hope unhelpful? Can hope become a burden, distract from present harms, individualise structural problems, or ask too much of people already working under constraint?
What does hope make possible? How might education create space for imagination, refusal, resistance, experimentation, or more just social and ecological futures?
Ideas you might explore
Your contribution might connect with one or more of the themes below (or take us somewhere else entirely!).
What does hope mean in your educational work? Where does it come from, and how is it shaped by different cultural, political, intellectual, or spiritual traditions?
Where and how is hope practised? How are educators building new pedagogies for hope embedded in course design, classroom relationships, assessment, or other spaces of your teaching practice, and what does this look like in online or asynchronous learning spaces?
How does hope work collectively? How is hope being built through relationships, solidarity, shared struggle, mutual support, or action with others?
How does hope move beyond the university? What happens when teaching and learning are embedded in relationships with communities, whānau, iwi, activist groups, workplaces, environments, or places?
How is hope understood and practised through Indigenous and decolonial ways of knowing? What might these perspectives ask us to rethink about education, the future, responsibility, power, and the kinds of hope we value?
What might institutional hope look like? How can leadership, administration, policy, programme design, or institutional activism create openings for change? What do higher education institutions (need to) do to enable or disable hope and hope-based practices?
Who gets to practise hope, and from what position? How is hope shaped by precarity, casualisation, workload, marginalisation, career stage, institutional power, or uneven access to resources?
What emotions sit alongside hope? How do educators and students work with grief, anger, fear, exhaustion, joy, care, or uncertainty?
When and/or how is hope unhelpful? Can hope become a burden, distract from present harms, individualise structural problems, or ask too much of people already working under constraint?
What does hope make possible? How might education create space for imagination, refusal, resistance, experimentation, or more just social and ecological futures?
When you submit your contribution, we will also ask you to choose up to three themes or keywords that you think best describe it. These will help us organise the online collection and make connections between contributions during the symposium.
How to register your interest
To register your interest, please fill in this form by 10 September 2026.
Your images and accompanying text/audio/video will be due on 26 October 2026. When you submit this, we will also ask you to choose up to three themes or keywords that you think best describe it. These will help us organise the online collection and make connections between contributions during the symposium.
To register your interest, please fill in this form by 10 September 2026.
Hope Collective Members
Associate Professor Alice Beban
Alice holds a PhD in Development Sociology from Cornell University. Her research explores environmental change, land and agrarian politics, and the ways people respond to uncertain futures, with a particular focus on Aotearoa New Zealand and Southeast Asia. She is also interested in pedagogies of hope and leads He Kaupapa Tūmanako / Project Hope, which works with secondary-school students to explore social and environmental issues through critically engaged social science.
Associate Professor Elaine Khoo
Elaine holds a PhD from the University of Waikato and a master's degree from Vanderbilt University. She is an expert in digital teaching methods. Elaine collaborates across learning contexts from early learning to tertiary study. Her work enhances teaching and learning across digital contexts like online, blended, mobile, flipped and virtual environments.
Dr. Clare Mouat
Clare holds a PhD in Planning from the University of Auckland. She is an interdisciplinary scholar-storyteller specialising in community, planning and governance. Her work planning and designing for hope has inspired many ways to build a flourishing future. Her work also influences law and policy in multiple places.
Associate Professor Amanda Flaim
Amanda holds a PhD in Development Sociology from Cornell University. She uses ethnographic, participatory, and survey methods to understand problems and paradoxes in human rights policy and development programs in mainland Southeast Asia. Her research agenda attends to political tensions in statelessness eradication programs at local and international scales, and the effects of precarious status on health outcomes, educational attainment, (un)safe migration and land-use/land claims among indigenous and ethnic minority communities in upland Thailand, in particular.
Associate Professor Daniel Ahlquist
Daniel holds a PhD in Development Sociology from Cornell University. His teaching and research explore diverse human relationships to place. He examines the political-ecological dimensions of landscapes and land use, engaging issues related to agriculture, conservation, development, displacement, migration, climate change, settler colonialism, and environmental justice. He is particularly interested in how social inequalities play out through uneven relationships to the environment, state, and market.
Dr. Lisa Vonk
Lisa holds a PhD in Media Studies from Massey University. Her research broadly considers the social and environmental impact of networked information and communication technologies. Lisa has a particular interest in issues of care as they pertain to the media. She is a Research Assistant with the Hope Collective, and will be the person answering your emails!
Supported by funding from Massey University College of Humanities and Social Sciences, with administrative support provided by the Massey University Political Ecology Research Centre.
Images by Hide Obara, Lina Trochez, and WonderLane