CORE ARTIST / RESEARCH TEAM

Arjen Wals - University of Gothenburg and Wageningen University

Arjen is a Professor of Transformative Learning for Socio-Ecological Sustainability at Wageningen University in The Netherlands. He also holds the UNESCO Chair of Social Learning and Sustainable Development. Furthermore he is the Carl Bennet Guest Professor in Education for Sustainable Development at Gothenburg University in Sweden and an Adjunct at Cornell University in the United States. His teaching and research focus on designing learning processes and learning spaces that enable people to contribute meaningfully sustainability. 

Natalia Eernstman - Plymouth College of Art

Natalia specialises in (community) learning through artful and performative means. As an educator, artist and researcher she initiates her own projects and works with theatre companies, universities, public authorities and charities. Over the past 5 years she has build an extensive body of work around climate change, sea level rise and coastal erosion in Cornwall (UK). She runs the 'MA Creative Education: Making Learning' at Plymouth College of Art. 

Åse Eliason Bjurström - University of Gothenburg

Åse has for the last 25 years been involved in various forms of trans-structural Glocal networks where drama and collaborative learning for sustainable development has been her main focus. She is a lecturer in Drama at the University of Gothenburg and lives on a small farm. Interested in questions like: How can playing with form foster agency? What is the disruptive potential in arts-based collective research? Åse is heading a Nordic Drama conference called Drama Boreale 18,The Open Ensemble

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Kelli Rose Pearson

Kelli focuses on the topics of leadership, culture shifts, and communication for sustainability. She is researching the role of imaginative leadership in supporting the transformative capacity of local leaders. Her professional experience includes nearly a decade the founder and owner of a successful cafe and community arts hub in Savannah, Georgia (The Sentient Bean) and another decade as a consultant and sustainability expert with the Economic Transformations Group, a cluster-based international economic development consultancy. 

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Blair van Pelt - Wageningen University

Blair, originally from Southern California, found her way to Wageningen, the Netherlands where she could pursue her passion for food, sustainable agriculture and green education by doing her MSc in organic agriculture. She felt instantly at home in the Netherlands and so she developed a career in the field of sustainable agriculture and curriculum development there. She currently works as a teacher at Wageningen University and via her consultancy company called Roots in Education (Wortels in Onderwijs). When not working she is likely gardening, composting or making yummy foods in the kitchen.

Anke de Vrieze - Wageningen University

Anke, based at the Rural Sociology Group at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, is daily coordinator of SUSPLACE -a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Innovative Training Network that explores the transformative capacity of sustainable place-shaping practices. In her role as daily coordinator she has become increasingly interested in collaborative learning and the ways in which it can be facilitated through the use of a diverse set of (creative) practices and methods. SUSPLACE: www.susplace.net

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