Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics (NorS)

Queer pedagogies here and now: Teaching queer studies at the intersection of global and local challenges

Seminar.

How can queer pedagogies be developed and practiced at a time when teaching and research take place amid complex global and local challenges?

That is the question we will address when researchers from across Europe meet for a seminar organised by the 4EU+ Network, InterGen, and the Coordination for Gender Research.

The seminar will feature a presentation by Mante Vertelyte (Aalborg University), who explores the small yet significant actions of diversity work, drawing on the experiences of women researchers in Danish STEM. We will also hear a presentation by Magda Pischetola (University of Copenhagen), who will speak about the pedagogies of care in higher education.

The day will conclude with a panel discussion in which university teachers from 4EU+ universities from Warsaw, Milan, Prague, and Copenhagen share their experiences teaching queer studies across cultural and institutional contexts.

Programme

13:30 – 13:45	Welcome: Michael Nebeling Petersen and Camilla Bruun Eriksen (UCPH)
13:45 – 14:30	Mante Vertelyte (AAU): Pedagogy as Everyday Frictional Encounters: Affects and Minor Gestures
14:30 – 15:00	Coffee and cake
15:00 – 15:45	Magda Pischetola (UCPH): Pedagogies of Care in Higher Education
15:45 – 16:00	Short break
16:00 – 17:00	Panel discussion: Experiences in Teaching Queer Studies Across 4EU+ Universities led by Josef Šebek (Charles University, Prague).

Abstracts

Mante Vertelyte (AAU)

Pedagogy as Everyday Frictional Encounters: Affects and Minor Gestures

What if pedagogy is not something we deliver, but something that happens in the background—frictional, partial, and fleeting? Drawing on affect theory and Erin Manning’s notion of the minor gesture, I explore how teaching and learning emerge in the midst of everyday encounters. These gestures—fleeting, relational, and improvisational—do not follow a script; they are frictional encounters that reconfigure what counts as learning, who counts as a learner, and how education unfolds at the margins of institutional life.

Drawing from different educational and institutional contexts—multicultural gymnasiums in Denmark and STEM departments across Danish universities—I trace how pedagogy materializes as frictional encounters shaped by affects. I show how these frictions make visible the processes of racialisation and gendering in educational institutions, and how they open possibilities for thinking and doing pedagogy otherwise.

Magda Pischetola (UCPH)

Pedagogies of Care in Higher Education

Pedagogy has to do with what a human being is and should become – which are fundamental philosophical questions about identity and purpose. In this sense, pedagogy implies an interpretation of humanity and its relationship to the world. In this talk, we explore the fundamental question: how can teachers make a difference not only by what they teach but by how they teach? The answer is sought in the concept of care, which brings to our attention the value of mutual responsibility, authentic dialogue, and receptivity. Care supports not only developing knowledge, but human growth and students’ motivation to learn. Care can also contrast the idea of knowledge as capital acquisition, and higher education as a competitive environment. However, care needs to maintain its political value, avoiding falling into dominant narratives of moral theory and universalism. A queer perspective on care can add the importance of lived-context situations, and a reflection on what it means to experience the nature of being/becoming human in relation to other humans.