DELIBERATE researcher Hanna Maija Huhtala participated in the annual conference of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB), held at the historic New College, Oxford. On the first day of the conference, Huhtala presented a joint paper with Katariina Holma entitled “Emotions and Community in Education for Deliberation: Insights from Philosophical Pragmatism.” In the presentation, Huhtala reconceptualized deliberation as a form of pragmatist inquiry in which emotions and community are understood as integral and fallible dimensions of human decision making, rather than as external or incidental factors. She and Holma argue that attending to these dimensions is essential for developing deliberative education that supports meaningful and reflective participation in democratic life.
A key collaborator of DELIBERATE, Professor Andrea English from the University of Edinburgh, also attended the conference as an invited speaker. In her inspiring talk “Difference and Education”, she highlighted three interconnected dimensions of educational meaning of difference: 1) individual, 2) the environment of learning, and 3) the intergenerational-pedagogical relationship. This view of educative difference aligns with a strand of contemporary discourse: ‘non-affirmative democratic education’ as an alternative to traditional educational views in which learners affirm the existing order of society. Andrea will also be a keynote speaker at DELIBERATE’s upcoming conference Dialogue in Democratic Education in Oulu, 10–12 June 2026.
