Date: Tuesday, October 6th 2020
 

Time: 17:00 - 18:00
 

Online Event: Click HERE to join us! 

This talk is part of the WCCI lecture series (for more information about the Webster Center for Creativity and Innovation visit wcci.webster.ch)

Philosophy begins in wonder. And much more follows from it. When wondering, we make the familiar unfamiliar. We don’t know and enjoy exploring the limits of our knowledge. We raise questions we have never raised before. We marvel at the world and at our place within it. We imagine and create. Wonder is more than a human phenomenon; it is what makes us human.

In this talk, Dr Glăveanu will examine the nature and characteristics of wonder as a social and psychological process. Dr Glăveanu will connect wondering with our general capacity to become aware of and explore the possible in our lives and the lives of others. Wonder, then, has an important role to play in education, even if we rarely cultivate it often because we don’t often value, in the classroom, the experience of dwelling in the unknown. Equally, in society, to wonder means to start questioning ideas that we usually take for granted and to (re)imagine social life. This is why wonder – including collective wondering – is so central for social movements and activism. And also why it is often seen as dangerous by those in power. After all, Socrates was made to drink hemlock for educating the Athenian youth to wonder. Are we ready to reassess our relation to this fundamental human process in the 21st century? Dr Glăveanu will argue not only that we should but that we must, if we are to raise new generations capable of complex, critical, and creative thinking.
 

This online event will also mark the launch of the book Wonder: The extraordinary power of an ordinary experience, published by Bloomsbury in 2020.
 

While this event is free of charge, we kinldy ask that you register HERE 

 

About the Speaker:

Vlad Glăveanu, PhD, is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Psychology and Counselling at Webster University Geneva, Associate Professor II at Bergen University, Norway, and Director of the Webster Center for Creativity and Innovation (WCCI). His work focuses on creativity, imagination, culture, collaboration, and societal challenges. He edited the Palgrave Handbook of Creativity and Culture (2016) and the Oxford Creativity Reader (2018) and co-edited the Cambridge Handbook of Creativity Across Domains (2017) and the Oxford Handbook of Imagination and Culture (2017). He co-edits the book series Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture for Palgrave Macmillan. Vlad is editor of Europe’s Journal of Psychology (EJOP), an open-access peer-reviewed journal published by PsychOpen (Germany). He received, in 2018, the Berlyne Award from the American Psychological Association for outstanding early career contributions to the field of aesthetics, creativity, and the arts.

While this event is free of charge, we kinldy ask that you register HERE