Welcome!

This is the place where you can read about the projects and people that Laura Hellsten has been a visionary leader of.

Previously Hellsten created arts and science collaborations at Åbo Akademi Univeristy under the project Avtryck i det okända – Forcing the Impossible. You can still find those collaborations and that work here.

Currently, Hellsten leads the Praxis of Social Imaginaries – a Theo-artistic Intervention for Transdisciplinary Research project at the Polin Institute of Theological Research. These pages are mainly dedicated to the Praxis project.

In short, the project aims to create a platform for transdisciplinary research collaborations that simultaneously trains people in transdisciplinary research skills while also developing methods and resources for doing transdisciplinary work. In addition to this, our transdisciplinary symposia investigate the relationship between praxis and social imaginaries in reading medieval travel accounts while critically inquiring about histories of othering, racialisation and changes in human relations to creation. Our transdisciplinary approach is particularly focused on creating a platform that enables dialogue and communal learning between Western dominant forms of academic research, and Indigenous and traditional forms of knowledge. For this aim, we are collaborating particularly with the Centre of Excellence: Sustainable Ocean Sciences (SOS) at Åbo Akademi Foundation, the places and the members of the local communities our project encounters.

The people currently working on the project are: post-doctoral researcher Eduardo Abrantes (PhD, Roskilde University) and doctoral student Tinka Harvard (ÅAU). In addition to this, theo-artistic interventions that have come out of our project, include: Spirit Land and Exploring Amazonian Cosmovisions.

Furthermore, Indigenous theologian Shilulina Jamir (India) collaborates with us in our inquiries into developing polysemous reading practices and experimenting with theo-artistic interventions as practices for de-colonialising university education.