Praxis of Social Imaginaries
– a Theo-artistic Intervention for Transdisciplinary Knowledge
Symmary
This project addresses urgent environmental challenges—such as biodiversity loss—by establishing a sustainable and innovative platform for transdisciplinary (TD) research and collaboration. Through a series of TD symposia, we convene a nomadic community of students, researchers, artists, activists, and local knowledge holders to co-develop and test TD skills, tools, and practices.
We boldly propose that engaging with non-dominant epistemologies—ways of knowing, sensing, and being—can foster anti-colonial TD collaboration and support the transformation of siloed knowledge production. Our aim is to create inclusive learning communities where site-specific and ancestral knowledges, folklore, and myths intersect with dominant sustainability science, generating new insights and approaches.
A key innovation is our use of polysemous reading practices, which draw on experimenting with artistic research practices while engaging with historical documents from the Åland Islands and the Archipelago Sea region. These practices allow for multiple interpretations and relational engagements with place. Within the symposia, we develop theo-artistic interventions—creative, embodied methods that reconnect participants with their sense of creatureliness and promote care for the lands and seas we inhabit.
The symposia serve as experimental sites, spaces of investigation and as an ethnographic field for research, enabling iterative refinement of TD tools and skills. They also catalyse collaborations between artists and researchers, resulting in new theo-artistic works that are shared with local communities through performances and dialogue sessions.
Finally, the project will pilot an Almanack of Transdisciplinary Gnoseology—a living archive of plural ways of knowing—to support future TD initiatives and knowledge integration.
Full project description
BACKGROUND
This project draws on historical knowledge to address contemporary environmental challenges such as biodiversity loss, while fostering a sustainable rhythm and an innovative platform for transdisciplinary inquiry. The term transdisciplinarity emerged in the 1970s and has since been used to tackle so-called “wicked problems”—a concept introduced by social planner C. West Churchman to describe issues that defy resolution due to their complexity and interdependence [1]. Today, some argue that transdisciplinarity itself constitutes a wicked problem [2]. Confusion persists within scientific communities regarding the distinctions between multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinary approaches, as well as how to make such collaborations effective. Multidisciplinary work typically involves researchers from different fields sharing results on a common topic. Interdisciplinary research (IDR), by contrast, entails deeper integration—cross-fertilising knowledge and methods, transcending disciplinary boundaries, and generating new research areas and more integrated insights [2; 3]. Studies on IDR show that addressing complex issues like biodiversity loss and sustainability requires structural changes in academia and funding models [2]. While such systemic change exceeds the scope of a single project, we draw on academic freedom and prior research to mitigate collaboration barriers by teaching process and systems knowledge in innovative formats [3].
For research communities aiming to influence society and nudge human behaviour, knowledge dissemination is a key concern. This is where transdisciplinary (TD) collaborations come in. By definition, transdisciplinary research (TDR) not only crosses disciplinary boundaries and focuses on complex, real-world issues, but also involves non-academic stakeholders, works reflexively, and aims for transformative interventions [3]. Such ambitions demand facilitation, long-term commitment, and perseverance in navigating both the problems and the knowledge they generate [2]. Non-academic involvement must begin early and continue throughout the process [3]. These efforts are especially effective in retreat-like settings, where trust can be built and artists and researchers can explore each other’s practices [4–6]. This project begins by developing and facilitating TD symposia that bring together a nomadic community of students, researchers, artists, activists, and local knowledge holders to experiment with TD skills, tools, and processes.
Current sustainability research shows that human activity has already breached several critical planetary boundaries, including biosphere integrity. This boundary encompasses not only genetic diversity but also functional diversity, which is far more complex to measure [7]. Biodiversity loss affects not only species and ecosystems but also human relationships with nature. These relationships are often reductively referred to as “ecosystem services,” which include cultural aspects such as aesthetic, religious, and spiritual values [8]. This project asks: Can TD communities reimagine human–nature relations by critically engaging with the problematic legacies of past decisions, while also cultivating creativity for new interventions? Can we work toward solutions for biodiversity loss that include a plurality of voices—heard, recognised, and invited into dialogue?
Richard H. Grove’s Green Imperialism (1995) reveals how environmentalism and conservation concepts are deeply entangled with colonial modes of reasoning, governance, and scientific organisation. Today, many environmental and biodiversity initiatives turn to Indigenous communities and traditional knowledge systems for alternative approaches to sustainability [9; 10]. While Indigenous communities are diverse, many share principles of care and reciprocity in their relationships with non-human beings [11–13]. Unfortunately, collaborations with traditional knowledge practitioners come against not only the existing asymmetric power relations that can be found between academic and non-academic participants, they encounter additional challenges. These disparities manifest not only in economic and political terms but also in epistemological and worldview clashes. Such tensions raise important questions: How can scientifically trained researchers engage with the spiritual dimensions of knowledge and the lived realities of people whose relationships with land, sea, and invisible or silenced knowledge forms are deeply interconnected? [14–17] In the emerging field of critical sustainability science, there is a growing call to decolonise TDR. This involves teaching skills for engaging local communities as equal partners, listening to and integrating diverse ways of knowing, and actively resisting extractivist research practices [18-20].
This project’s novel approach is to recognise that movements towards decolonising TDR can function as tools that facilitate transdisciplinary investigations (TDI) also for non-indigenous communities. We ask: How can researchers trained within the siloed structures of Western academia acquire TD skills and tools that challenge dominant colonial patterns of knowledge production? Max Liboiron’s pioneering work on sustainability and colonialism offers valuable insights. Crucially, they caution against conflating “Western” and “colonial” [21]. Instead, they distinguish between Indigenous science, anti-colonial sustainability work, and dominant scientific practices. Indigenous science is defined as “science done by and for Indigenous people within Indigenous cosmologies” [21]. While this project does not claim to teach Indigenous science, some participants carry and promote Indigenous knowledge and cosmologies.
Anti-colonial scientific methods, by contrast, aim to: “not reproduce settler and colonial entitlement to Land and Indigenous cultures, concepts, knowledges (including Traditional Knowledge), and lifeworlds.”[21]. These goals align with the skills and practices cultivated in the symposia developed by this project. Importantly, Liboiron highlights the distinction between dominant and non-dominant forms of science. Not all Western scientific traditions are based on dominance and mastery; some have emerged from periods where humans were not viewed as separate or superior to nature [21]. This project takes seriously theologian Willie James Jennings’ claim that dominant Western science has displaced humans from the lands they inhabit and wounded their sense of creatureliness [22]. Echoing Frantz Fanon, we acknowledge that colonial wounds—long-term effects of colonisation—create specific pathologies in both colonisers and the colonised [23]. These patterns often become embedded in what are perceived as self-evident worldviews and habitual practices. Jennings refers to this as a distorted Christian social imaginary, which has come to shape intellectual and pedagogical norms in universities [24; 25].
Anti-colonial work involves identifying and breaking with these entrenched patterns—a difficult but necessary task [26; 27]. This project boldly proposes that engaging with non-dominant ways of knowing, sensing, feeling, and being can help us unlearn and open space for truly TD collaboration. Liboiron argues that not all Western methods are extractive and that knowledge can be co-created ethically and sustainably. Furthermore, not all Western reasoning promotes hegemonic, universalising claims to “objective” knowledge. Examples of traditions that have flourished during different periods of the formation of universities include – but are not limited to – practices like alchemy, Mid-wifery, and preventative medicine [21]. Similarly, in theology and religious sciences, practices like animism, fetishisation, and magic are frequently dismissed as superstition, paganism, or even demonised within dominant frameworks [28]. Yet other theological traditions seek to reclaim these and other “folkloric” or “esoteric” practices as theologically meaningful [29–33]. Inspired by Gloria Anzaldúa’s work on borderlands [34] and Catherine Walsh’s work on decolonial pedagogies, this project envisions change through critical resistance to dominant scientific structures and the creation of space for “other ways of being and thinking in and with the world” [35]. To this end, the project turns toward minor knowledges, ancestral practices, and historically silenced voices—especially those found in local communities that still engage in storytelling and traditions at risk of erasure. These practices are re-evaluated for their potential to address biodiversity loss in the Åland Islands and Archipelago Sea region.
Aims and Objectives
This project builds on a pilot created in collaboration with a Nordic Summer University study circle, which tested the potential of TD symposia with nomadic communities. The aim was to bring together students, researchers, and artists from across the Nordic-Baltic region to foster dialogue around eco-social challenges and explore how encounters with diverse cosmologies—past and present—can support or hinder TD knowledge production. In the pilot, we conducted TD readings of medieval travel accounts, where theologians and merchants described encounters with non-European others in Africa, the East, the North, and across the Atlantic. Texts included influential ethnographic descriptions by Gerald of Wales, Marco Polo, Ibn Khaldun, Bartolomé de las Casas, and Olaus Magnus. The study circle attracted students from the Global South, as well as artists and researchers with Indigenous backgrounds, though we were unable to engage participants from the natural sciences. Reading sessions also explored how non-archival sources and minority accounts—methods pioneered by Walter Mignolo [36] and Saidiya Hartman [37]—can be foregrounded in decolonial historical discussions. According to student feedback, the most liberating and transformative experiences came from artist-led workshops grounded in artistic research methods [16]. These findings align with previous research showing that artists play key roles in generating both orientational and transformative knowledge in TDR projects [3; 38–40]. This is partly because artists help facilitate what Törmanen et al. call systems knowledge—the capacity to experiment, activate creative thinking, make wise decisions, and create spaces open to attunement and vulnerability [41]. Moreover, the collaboration between artistic research and theology represents a return to pre-colonial relationships between art and spiritual inquiry. Peter Harrison’s work illustrates how theological knowledge once centered on performance, ritual, and minority accounts that shaped social imaginaries, while Natural Philosophy focused on abstract conceptualisations of the world. With the rise of modern science, theology became text-based and dogmatic, losing its polysemous engagement with creation. Simultaneously, the natural sciences started experimenting with practices and adopted rigid notions of objectivity and data collection as the sole valid paths to knowledge [42–44].
This projects objective is to facilitate communities of learning where siloed forms of knowledge production are transformed for the benefit of TDI where site-specific and local knowledges get to cross fertilise each other for a diversity of voices to be heard. This work is done by continued and expanded collaborations with artists and artistic research methods, aligning our objectives with Walter Mignolo’s three principles of investigation: gnoseology, aestheSis, and pluriversal border dwelling. Additionally, we have initiated direct partnerships with Åbo Akademi University’s Centre of Excellence in Sustainable Ocean Sciences (SOS), including collaboration with Anna Törnroos-Remes (ÅAU), the Archipelago Sea Biosphere Reserve, and local Åland communities. These partnerships help ensure the inter- and TD nature of the symposia.
The first aim is to develop TD symposia where skills are cultivated, processes facilitated, and collaborative projects supported—working toward the reconstitution of epistemic and aesthetic practices into non-harmful tools for TD work [45]. This builds on Nelson Maldonado-Torres’ assertion that decolonial pedagogies must address the liberation of particular bodies, minds, territories, institutions, cultures, and knowledges [46]. We argue that such liberation is also necessary for historically silenced voices and ancestral practices within Western non-dominant forms of knowledge. As facilitating materials of the TD symposia we use historical texts, experimenting with artistic research practices and listening to and engaging, with the local knowledges found in the communities we visit. The second aim is to conduct TDI that explore non-dominant knowledges, silenced voices, and practices—past and present—that may offer new insights into biodiversity loss in the Åland Islands and Archipelago Sea region. This involves site-specific fieldwork, recurring workshops, and community events.
The final aim is to create a pilot platform for disseminating the knowledge generated through the symposia and TDI. This platform will connect with mainstream citizen science initiatives and integrate data from our SOS partners. Titled the Almanack of Transdisciplinary Gnoseology, the platform is inspired by the lesser-known work of Åland theologian Valdemar Nyman. Visually, it draws from the Carta Marina (1539) by Olaus Magnus, which accompanied his History of the Nordic People—a rich collection of nature observations, folkloric traditions, and cultural practices.
Materials, methods and work outline
Mignolo emphasizes that there is no universal system or guaranteed method for decolonising universities [47]. Instead, he advocates for healing colonial wounds through practices of reconstitution [45]. Central to this is gnoseology—the understanding that knowledge exists both within and beyond academia, and across disciplinary boundaries [45]. Mignolo’s use of gnosis rather than epistemology reflects a commitment to center forms of subjectivity that are open to multiple ways of knowing, communal wisdom not bound by modern humanist frameworks, and voices historically marginalised [45]. In this project, gnoseology is reflected in who is invited to the dialogue, the tools used for inquiry, and what is considered knowledge worthy of dissemination. We convene a nomadic community of students, researchers, artists, and activists from across the Nordic region, including participants from ÅAU, its European partners, and individuals from the Global South. Together, we create site-specific symposia that use art-based dialogue to engage with both local concerns and the history of the communities we visit.
The historical texts used as facilitation materials include: Gesta Danorum by Saxo Grammaticus (c. 1150–1220), Itinarium and Liber Census Daniæ by Valdemar II Valdemarsen (1170–1241), Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness: Arab Travellers in the Far North (13th century), Selections from Olaus Magnus’ Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus (1555). These medieval and early modern accounts were chosen for their rich depictions of the seas, lands, flora, fauna, myths, and cultural customs of the Nordic-Baltic region. By engaging with texts that describe a world vastly different from our own, participants are invited into a shared starting point—one that lies outside their disciplinary boundaries and opens space for multiple ways of knowing.
The next step is to transgress dominant historical, literary, and theological research practices by using decolonial TD tools of inquiry (outlined in the next section). Artistic research is central to this process. We call our tool polysemous reading practices, designed to create space for diverse voices to be heard. In each community we visit—Kökar (Åland), Husö Biological Station in Saltvik, Rosala Viking Village in the Archipelago Biosphere Region, Sandvik (Bornholm, Denmark), Sigtunastiftelsen (Sweden), and Ísafjörður (Westfjords, Iceland)—we invite local residents to share seafaring practices, biodiversity knowledge, and mythologies of the more-than-human world. Polysemous reading does not reject dominant scientific methods but rather decenter and destabilise them to create a gnoseological experience of plural knowledge systems. The symposia serve as both experimental spaces and sites of investigation. Primary materials include participatory field notes and observations. Students may also contribute learning diaries voluntarily to inform the development of our processes. Dissemination of the symposia is supported by participatory ethnographic fieldwork conducted by our Indigenous postdoctoral researcher in theology, Shiluinla Jamir (India). Her inquiry focuses on unlearning and developing decolonial tools for TDI. Her central question: Are we successfully cultivating polysemous reading practices that open space for multiple ways of knowing?
The methodology of the TD symposia in this project is guided by Mignolo’s call to de-naturalise aesthetics and emphasize aestheSis. Rather than centering on conventional notions of art, beauty, the sublime, or separating nature and spirituality from culture and politics, Mignolo focuses on ways of being, sensing, and emoting in/with the cosmos [48]. He argues that living well together depends on our sensory perception, being, and action—where knowing and believing are inseparable [45]. This project teaches practices of listening and attunement, storytelling as world-making, embodied knowing, and communal relationality. We call these practices theo-artistic interventions—tools for decolonial TD inquiry that reconnect us with our sense of creatureliness and foster care for the lands and seas we inhabit. Theo-artistic interventions used in the symposia may include: preparing communal meals using historical recipes, composing music from poetic texts, re-enacting rituals and performative elements from the manuscripts, exploring biodiversity through local mythologies and ecological histories. Theo-artistic interventions serve two purposes:
- Investigating historical documents through artistic research and communal dialogue [16]. This revitalises pre-colonial relationships between art and theology, shifting focus from mastery of original languages or textual interpretation to sensing, embodying, and emoting with the historical materials under investigation.
- Engaging with site-specific questions of biodiversity loss by activating local myths, stories, and historical practices embedded in the landscape.
In the symposia, participants work with translated manuscripts and experiment with the migration of knowledge—bringing insights from historical contexts into contemporary challenges. This work is facilitated through artist-led workshops and postdoctoral research on processual knowing by Eduardo Abrantes (ÅAU/Denmark). The doctoral work of Katarina Gäddnäs (ÅAU) contributes to the reconstitution of gnoseology and aestheSis by investigating the works of the Åland based theologian Valdemar Nyman (1904-1998). Nyman both wrote in a polysemous manner about the lands and seas of the Åland archipelago and practiced ecological interventions through his theo-artistic productions [49; 50]. She asks how Valdemar’s legacy of TD tools can be used today to combat biodiversity loss?
The second aspect of theo-artistic interventions involves the outcomes that emerge from the community work initiated during the symposia. These outcomes may take the form of traditional academic publications in peer-reviewed journals or artistic creations exhibited in museums, churches, and interdisciplinary forums such as the annual Aboagora event in Turku, where art and science converge. The symposia foster collaborations between science and art, generating new forms of action that do not separate knowing from believing. In the pilot project, several such collaborations emerged, leading to separate funding applications. We now aim to have artistic work funded and published alongside academic research—a sustainability-driven choice towards structural change. To counter exploitative research practices, our cyclical research model ensures we give back to the communities we engage with. This includes sharing theo-artistic interventions and hosting dialogue sessions that revisit and re-listen to the gnoseological insights offered by the community. These interventions often take place in community centers, public libraries, local festivals, and other non-institutional settings.
This brings us to the third and final aspect of Mignolo’s framework for reconstitution; dwell at the experiences of being at a border and enact the thinking that happens there. Both Mignolo and Walsh emphasize that there is no space “free” from coloniality from which alternative worlds can be built [35]. When in doubt, Mignolo adds, “your body will tell you how to do it” [47]. For this reason, our project is structured around symposia held outside university settings, involving theo-artistic experimentation in collaboration with local communities. We meet in community centers, artist residencies, cultural and biodiversity hubs, forming a nomadic community that listens first—to both the people and the more-than-human entities present in each landscape. We establish a sustainable rhythm and innovative platform for transdisciplinary investigations by returning to the same sites and sharing what has been learned and co-created. Border dwelling is reflected not only in our tools, processes and structures but also in our investigations into historically silenced voices, ancestral practices, and local gnoseologies. Principal Investigator Laura Hellsten (ÅAU) explores these themes in collaboration with composer Frank Berger, whose theatrical choir work centers on forgotten figures from the Åbo region. Hellsten also works with filmmaker and performance artist Lotta Petronella to explore the plant and mystical knowledge of Christina Mirabilis (c. 1150–1224). These artistic projects are funded independently, while Hellsten’s scholarship is supported through this application.
Further TDI is conducted by doctoral researcher Robertho Paredes (Peru), who investigates the Amazonian knowledge of his Harakbut ancestors in the Madre de Dios region. His photographic and documentary work explores multi-species semiotics and submerged perspectives [52; 53]. This project also includes a counterpoint to the Nordic focus by examining three Latin American historical authors. Recognizing that many issues in dominant scientific practices stem from a diseased Christian social imaginary, we will host a symposium in Salamanca, Spain—site of both resistance and complicity in colonial theological discourse. In the Salamanca symposium we examine: Pedro de Córdoba’s Doctrina cristiana para instruccion é informacion de los Indios por manera de historia (1544), José de Acosta’s Historia Natural y Morales de las Indias (1589) and the counter-narrative of Blas Valera (1544–1597)’s life. This symposium aims to understand how minority voices were formulated and what was lost in their silencing. These inquiries speak directly to our present-day human and non-human relations and how they might be reimagined through decolonial TDI tools.
The innovative dimension of pluriversal border dwelling in this project is realised through the creation of an Almanack of Transdisciplinary Gnoseology—a pilot platform for collecting the gnoseological insights and theo-artistic interventions developed throughout the project. This platform serves two key functions: 1) It compiles the findings from our symposia and TDI into an open, interactive format. 2) It integrates these insights with data from citizen science initiatives and our partners at the Sustainable Ocean Sciences (SOS) program and biosphere region laboratories.
The Almanack becomes a space where border dwelling can actively take place—bringing together diverse ways of knowing, from mythological figures and local storytelling to artworks, folkloric traditions, and historical records. This pluriversal format opens pathways for new knowledge creation. To begin, the Almanack will focus on two case studies: Kökar and Husö Biological Station, where the writings of Valdemar Nyman provide a foundational structure for how border dwelling can be expressed in written form. Katarina Gäddnäs’ previous literary work on Nyman, along with her doctoral research within this project, will form the basis for the Almanack’s development. As the project progresses, we will expand the platform to include images, sounds, and other multimedia formats. The Almanack will follow Max Liboiron’s principles by supporting the Global Open Science Hardware (GOSH) movement and adhering to the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance, even though the knowledge and artworks it contains are rooted in local island practices and stories.
SVENSKA
Projektet är nydanande i hur mötet mellan akademi och samhälle, samt olika kunskapstraditioner och vetenskapsfält formas. Vi för samman studenter och forskare främst från Åbo Akademi, med konstnärer, studenter och samhällsaktiva i hela Norden. Bland medskaparna finns även indigenous forskare och konstnärer. Från tidigare forskning om transdisciplinaritet vet vi att processen med att etablera relationer och spendera tid tillsammans är central för att parterna skall mötas som likvärdiga medlemmar. Därför utformas projektet som en rad symposier där medverkandena tränas i färdigheter som att lyssna, läsa, berätta och leda dialogsessioner. Vi har även genomfört en pilotstudie under en studiecirkel i Nordiskt sommaruniveristets regi från vilken vi hämtar lärdomar till detta projekt.
Som underlag för symposierna använder vi oss av medeltida reseskildringar där vi ta del av berättelser om hur mötet mellan olika människor och kulturer skedde, men även av hur den medeltida resenären – ofta teolog och missionär men även handelsman eller upptäcktsresande – beskrev de för honom nya markerna, djuren, växterna och naturfenomenen. Texterna skildrar tidiga koloniala tendenser som senare kommit att dominera modern västerländsk vetenskapssyn där exstrakivistiska praktiker berättigas. En av de centrala texterna är Olaus Magnus Historia om de nordiska folken (1555). Under symposierna tränas deltagarna att se på världen och sin egen verklighetsuppfattning på nya sätt. Detta sker genom att symposierna förflyttar oss i både tid och rum. Deltagarna möts på olika platser, för att tillsammans med människor från olika kunskapstraditioner och med olika livserfarenheter, läsa, reflektera och skapa dialog kring en text som för oss till en “främmande värld”. Deltagarna inbjuds ytterligare att experimentera med olika lyssnande och berättande praktiker när vi leds både av medverkande konstnärer, och dem som bär på traditionell och lokal kännedom om de platser och miljöer vi besöker. Härigenom möts flera kunskapstraditioner kring frågan, vad är det vi kan lära oss från det förgångna för att göra något nytt med samtida utmaningar av biologisk och samhällelig hållbarhet.
Projektets forskningsbidrag sträcker sig mot tre olika fält. Den första gruppen använder sig av de transdisciplinära symposierna för att närma sig de historiska texterna. Speciellt intresserade är de av att utveckla metoder för att lyfta fram nedtystade röster och kunskap som blivit åsidosatt eller hållits gömd bortanför det vi finner i texten. En andra grupp fokuserar sig på utvärdering och metodutveckling kring transdisciplinärt lärande genom att samla material från symposiedeltagarna genom inlärningsdagböcker och deltagande observationer. Speciellt intresse finns det för att se hur samarbetena med konstnärer bär på kapaciteten att belysa traditionell och lokal kunskap på nya sätt. Den tredje gruppen fokuserar sig på att samla in och återge den kunskapsöverföring som sker mellan olika medverkanden, speciellt när det kommer till samspelet mellan praktiker och kunskap om biodiversitet.
Ifall du är en konstnär, forskare eller samhällsaktiv som är intresserad av att jobba på detta sätt, är det bara att höra av sig till oss för att få mer information om våra kommande symposier och evenemang!