This one-day Symposium brings to a conclusion the ‘Education, Purpose and Human Flourishing in Uncertain Times’ research project, funded by the Templeton World Charity Foundation. The three-year long project examined critically how human flourishing is understood, and traced the staggered and often difficult pathways toward its attainment.

Education is one such pathway, and its mediating role in the attainment of human flourishing was deliberated in over 24 public seminars under three themes: ‘culture and context’, ‘personhood and social encounters’, and ‘society and transformation’. Each year, a residential Visiting Fellowship was offered to a scholar who contributed to the research project.

In this symposium, we return to the themes of the research and reflect on what we have learned. Uncertainty prevails, sharply marked by an increase in personal hardships and human suffering, wars and threats of war, and an alarming unravelling of the thin threads that gave diverse communities across Europe and the United States of America some semblance of cohesion. What then for Education, and for Human Flourishing?

Talks:

Education, Purpose, and Human Flourishing in Uncertain Times Final Report.
David Johnson, Department of Education, University of Oxford

A sense of self in times of crisis. Girls, education and the climate crisis in Pakistan
Aditi Chidambaram and Dr Aliya Khalid, Department of Education, University of Oxford

Navigating ‘new’ futures amid unplanned life events
Nkpoikana-Abasi Aniefiok, Department of Education, University of Oxford

Decolonisation, Development Aid, and Contested Discourse: Reflections on Moral Authority and Flourishing
Professor Jonathan Lijeblad, ANU College of Law

The Right to Flourish? Palestine, Israel and States of Exception
Dr Walter Armbrust, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, St Antony’s College

Normalising Nazism: Infiltration of educational institutions by right-wing extremist parents in Germany
Dr Lynn Schneider, International Centre for Counter- Terrorism, Den Haag

Belonging to the Difficult Past: History education and human flourishing among Coloured* youth in Johannesburg
Dr Natasha Robinson, Department of Education, University of Oxford

*
‘Coloured’ was a racial classification used in Apartheid South Africa and remains in official use today. It has caused alarm internationally and remains contested. Its use in this programme is not intended to cause offense.