And what if the desert bloomed again? Imagination at the heart of human and social experience
 

Speaker: Prof. Tania Zittoun, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland
 

Date: 25 January (17:30 – 19:30)
 

Place: LLC Commons Room

This event is free, but registration is mandatory here.
 

Imagination has long been considered as something frivolous, in which children and artists could indulge but that should be controlled to by the responsible adult and citizen. However, when closely examined, imagination appears as a simply dynamic at the heart of our capacity to explore the past, alternative possibilities, or the future to come.
 

Also, imagination does not only belong to our private life – it is cultural per definition: what each of us can imagine depends not only on our past experiences, but also on the movies we have seen and the books we have read, the objects around us, the interactions we have with others. Finally, what we have imagined may become the resources for others to imagine, leading to shared projects and technical innovation.
 

This lecture will be the occasion to present a novel sociocultural psychological approach to imagination. Drawing on various fields of psychology, in dialogue with the arts and social sciences, the contemporary study of imagination opens exciting new fields of enquiry, which have implication for education, social work, everyday practice – and perhaps the future of the world.
 

The event will include a small reception from 17:30, marking the launch of the Handbook of Imagination and Culture (Oxford University Press, 2018), edited by Tania Zittoun and Vlad Glaveanu. Professor Zittoun’s talk will start at 18:15, followed by a final reception from 19:00.
 

Speaker biography
 

Tania Zittoun is full professor in sociocultural psychology and Head of the Institute of Psychology and Education at the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. A developmental psychologist, she has studied learning and development in lifecourse, in formal and informal settings. She has written extensively on transitions in the lifecourse, and on the role of fiction and cultural experiences. Her current empirical work addresses repeated mobility, as well as ageing. She is Associate Editor of Culture & Psychology, and her last books are Imagination in Human and Cultural development (with Alex Gillespie, Routledge, 2016) and the Handbook of culture and imagination (OUP, 2018, co-edited with Vlad Glaveanu).
 

This event is free, but registration is mandatory here.