FORSKARGRUPPEN

INTRA

RESEARCH GROUP

Välkommen – Welcome

Om du föredrar Svensk text – välj Svensk version.

INTRA is a research environment that explore the significance of aesthetic activity in pedagogical contexts. In these contexts, we are able to discover new perspectives on how experience, knowledge and new insights emerge. “INTRA” focuses on how the becoming of human beings intra-relates to other human beings as well as to other matters. We have proceeded from “inter-relations” to the broader concept of “intra-relation”. Materiality is seen as everything from human bodies, language and tools to physical environments and nature.

Aesthetic forms of expressions contribute to the discovery of this intra-relating, and thereby to an ethical responsibility for the climate and environment of the earth.

“Pedagogy” refers to- and has validity for encounters between human beings in different contexts as well as to how these encounters are embodied. These pedagogical aesthetic activities elaborate on EXA (Expressive Arts). The kernel of our work is the relations between human beings and matter, through expressions such as painting/sculpture, dance/movement, sound/music, poetry/tales, psychodrama/theatre as well as interactions and dialogue.

Popular education and the radical tradition of popular education in the spirit of Paulo Freire, in an important part of INTRA’s background. The popular education has contributed in building and developing the Nordic societies and their democracies. In Sweden, over a million people are participating each year in study associations and folk high schools, characterized by diversity and coequal dialogues. The main goal of popular education, according to us, is that as many people as possible should be able to grow as human beings and gain influence on their life situations and in their local society, which comes about through processes where we share knowledges and experiences with each other as equals. The sharing is, in this sense, the main tool of popular education. The members of INTRA have, in different ways and in different extents, been active within popular education. We are currently actualizing the notion of “formation” by introducing the thoughts of Freire in new contexts”, at the same time as Paulo Freire is actualized in Sweden through new readings and a new translation of his Pedagogy of the Oppressed.

Read more about our theoretical framework under “Program Statement”

You can read about the members of the Research Group INTRA under “Members”