We live in a critically overheated world (Eriksen 2016) whereby current and future generations will bear unfair costs of our private and public choices. However, children’s interests remain on the periphery of decisions that affect them the most. Therefore, my primary motivation is to contribute to childism research in order to enhance academic and non-academic sensibilities towards children as a structurally marginalized group.
My doctoral work focused on suggesting a childist perspective for the pedagogy of philosophy in response to an overheated era of Anthropocene neoliberalism. As part of this project I explored the philosophical richness that children and childhood have to offer adults in high Human Development Index contexts. I ascribed to the methodological attitude of ‘muddling through’ in childhood studies, drawing upon continental phenomenology and Indian philosophy. Such an attitude highlights incompleteness and immaturity in the adult-self, as opposed to the child-other. Previously, during my second master’s degree in childhood studies, I researched everyday lives of Tibetan Buddhist child monks in Ladakh. For this work I used qualitative (ethnographic) research methods as practised within the childhood studies paradigm.
As part of independent research and development initiatives, I have also carried out additional crowd-funded projects in monastic contexts in Ladakh. Among other aspects, this work highlighted the agency that child monks can show in choosing voluntary simplicity as a way of life. Modernity on the other hand imposes a singular standardised lifestyle onto children - ushering them into scholastic economy as future human capital. ‘Developed’ societies do not offer children the structural possibility to choose lifestyles that contradict consumerist economy. Schooling as the dominant way of life for modern children, it appears, has a highly instrumentalising function serving large scale economic profits as opposed to goals of long-term sustainability. Prior to the second master, I completed a master’s degree in philosophy and studied the Heideggerian ontological reading of modern technology. Heideggerian concepts such as ‘enframing (Gestell)’ and ‘standing reserve (Bestand)’ influenced my understanding of the overheated early 21st century with reference to the instrumentalising global educational sector. Against this research background, I consider the socio-political agency demonstrated by Greta Thunberg, as a minor/pupil from a highly privileged country, worthy of interdisciplinary philosophical study. Hence, I recently co-operated with the Junior Professorship of Political Philosophy at the University of Bayreuth (Germany) to teach a seminar titled ‘Climate Justice: Rights, Duties and Education’.
My doctoral work focused on suggesting a childist perspective for the pedagogy of philosophy in response to an overheated era of Anthropocene neoliberalism. As part of this project I explored the philosophical richness that children and childhood have to offer adults in high Human Development Index contexts. I ascribed to the methodological attitude of ‘muddling through’ in childhood studies, drawing upon continental phenomenology and Indian philosophy. Such an attitude highlights incompleteness and immaturity in the adult-self, as opposed to the child-other. Previously, during my second master’s degree in childhood studies, I researched everyday lives of Tibetan Buddhist child monks in Ladakh. For this work I used qualitative (ethnographic) research methods as practised within the childhood studies paradigm.
As part of independent research and development initiatives, I have also carried out additional crowd-funded projects in monastic contexts in Ladakh. Among other aspects, this work highlighted the agency that child monks can show in choosing voluntary simplicity as a way of life. Modernity on the other hand imposes a singular standardised lifestyle onto children - ushering them into scholastic economy as future human capital. ‘Developed’ societies do not offer children the structural possibility to choose lifestyles that contradict consumerist economy. Schooling as the dominant way of life for modern children, it appears, has a highly instrumentalising function serving large scale economic profits as opposed to goals of long-term sustainability. Prior to the second master, I completed a master’s degree in philosophy and studied the Heideggerian ontological reading of modern technology. Heideggerian concepts such as ‘enframing (Gestell)’ and ‘standing reserve (Bestand)’ influenced my understanding of the overheated early 21st century with reference to the instrumentalising global educational sector. Against this research background, I consider the socio-political agency demonstrated by Greta Thunberg, as a minor/pupil from a highly privileged country, worthy of interdisciplinary philosophical study. Hence, I recently co-operated with the Junior Professorship of Political Philosophy at the University of Bayreuth (Germany) to teach a seminar titled ‘Climate Justice: Rights, Duties and Education’.