Conference Agenda

In an increasingly polarised, complex and uncertain world, universities must adequately prepare students to engage meaningfully with societal challenges (Allen et al., 2025). This means that, apart from focusing on what students should become, universities should also focus on who they are becoming. This calls for more than disciplinary knowledge and skills: it requires cultivating democratic competences such as a critical understanding of the self, skills of listening and observing, critical reflection, and empathy (Barrett, 2016).

Service-learning offers a powerful pedagogical framework that can bridge the gap between head and hands by combining academic theory and community interests. Particularly interdisciplinary service-learning, in which students from various academic disciplines jointly collaborate on addressing complex societal issues, can foster specific democratic competencies such as a tolerance of ambiguity and flexibility and adaptability (Horn et al., 2022). Although interdisciplinary service-learning aims to integrate head and hands, explicitly incorporating the heart is challenging in our current educational system which prioritizes analytical thinking over embodied ways of knowing.

Social Presencing Theater (SPT) is an embodied awareness-based approach which aims to bridge the disconnect between head, hands and heart by making social dynamics and relationships visible though embodiment andmovement (Hayashi, 2021). SPT offers concrete practices that help students slow down, sense, and reflect on their role in social systems (Hayashi, 2021). Developed by Otto Scharmer (Theory U) and Arawana Hayashi, SPT uses movement-based and non-verbal exercises to surface hidden dynamics inaccessible through discussion or reading alone (Scharmer, 2016). By engaging the body as a source of knowledge, SPT complements analytical reasoning and experiential learning.

Previous experiments with SPT in the inter- and transdisciplinary module “Interdisciplinary Community Service Learning” (iCSL) at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam revealed that students gained empathy, creativity, and embodied awareness. Engaging in SPT exercises also gave them a felt dimension of the complex societal issue at hand. However, we also noticed that students struggled with stillness and uncertainty, highlighting the need for sustained, structured practice. Furthermore, engaging the body as a source of knowledge in educational activities also requires educators to be present and embodied.

In this activating session, after introducing SPT and the iCSL module, participants will participate in an SPT practice. This will allow them to experience what it feels like to bring their bodies in and give some felt insights into how using the body as a source of knowledge can foster key democratic competences for addressing complex societal challenges.