Inaugural lecture Caroline Suransky

On 12 November 2025 at 3.30 p.m., Prof. Caroline Suransky, Professor of Education and Social Change at the University of Humanistic Studies, will deliver her inaugural lecture entitled Education at a crossroads: diversity, equity and inclusion in the Anthropocene. The chair focuses on Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) in higher education and is the first chair at the UvH with an educational profile.

In her inaugural address Carolina Suransky argues that education cannot be neutral in times of ecological crises, inequality and polarization. She weaves together two main threads: pluralism and justice. Pluralism, she maintains, is at once a pedagogical practice that embraces dialogue and discomfort, an analytical lens to resist binaries, an epistemological stance that honors diverse traditions of knowledge and a political horizon where knowledge and politics meet. Justice, the second thread, is inseparable from ecological and social concerns. To ground these ideas, she interweaves personal stories that show how lived experience and theory speak to one another. Drawing on thinkers such as Appadurai, Mbembe and Latour, Suransky calls for humanistic education that opens spaces for many voices, confronts colonial legacies and helps us imagine more just and sustainable futures.

You can register for the live event or for the livestream via the Dutch-language website.

Prior to her appointment as professor on 1 May 2025, Caroline Suransky was associate professor in the Education chair group at the University of Humanistic Studies. She is also a professor at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. In collaboration with the French collective S-Composition, she develops educational interventions inspired by the ideas of Bruno Latour.