"SPINE Breakfast Talk for PhD Candidates and Postdoctoral Researchers";"SPINE, Department of Science Education, BRIC";"2026-06-09";"09:30";"2026-06-09";"11:00";"IND, Niels Bohr Bygningen, Jagtvej 155A 2200 Kbh. N, room: 128+140";"Join this breakfast talk with visiting scholar Dr Laura Kayes from Australia. Her doctoral thesis explores how university innovation initiatives foster interdisciplinary collaboration across traditionally siloed institutional structures.";" Laura will share insights from her doctoral research, followed by an open discussion and space for questions The SPINE project warmly invites PhD candidates and postdoctoral researchers to an informal breakfast talk and discussion with visiting scholar Dr Laura Kayes from Australia Register Laura recently completed her PhD at RMIT University. Her doctoral thesis, “The Relational Infrastructure of Innovation: Interdisciplinary Knowledge Building in Australian Higher Education”, explores how university innovation initiatives foster interdisciplinary collaboration across traditionally siloed institutional structures, with particular attention to the participation of humanities, arts, and social sciences disciplines. Drawing on research across innovation labs, accelerators, and venture initiatives, her work examines how relationships, institutional arrangements, and systems of recognition shape what kinds of knowledge can meaningfully contribute to interdisciplinary work. During the session, Laura will share insights from her doctoral research, followed by an open discussion and space for questions. Beyond the presentation itself, the event is intended as a collegial and informal space for PhDs and ECRs to connect across departments and faculties, exchange ideas, and discuss shared interests and challenges in research. The aim is also to explore whether there is interest in developing similar future sessions where researchers can share work in progress, receive feedback, discuss concepts and methodologies, and reflect collectively on research practices and concerns across disciplinary boundaries. Breakfast and coffee will be provided. All interested PhD candidates and postdoctoral researchers are very welcome. Warm wishes,Natalia Rodriguez Castañeda and Vera SpanglerPostdoctoral Researchers, SPINE Project"
"PhD defence by Fridtjof Ronge Gjengset";"";"2026-06-09";"13:00";"2026-06-09";"16:00";"Hybrid defence";"Translating embodied cognition perspectives to STEM education";"Translating embodied cognition perspectives to STEM educationAssessment Committee:Professor Henriette Tolstrup Holmegaard, Institut for Naturfagenes Didaktik, University of Copenhagen (Chairperson)Senior Lecturer Antti Lehtinen, University of JyväskyläProfessor Laura Colucci-Gray, University of EdinburghSupervisor(s):Associate Professor Jesper BruunAssistant Professor Magdalena Kersting Department:Department of Science EducationPlace:The defence is conducted as a hybrid defence.To attend the defence in person:Universitetsparken 1 - Datalogisk Institut, Room: Store UP1 - 5-1-02, Universitetsparken 1, 2100, CopenhagenTo attend the defence online:Please follow the link to attend the defence online: https://ucph-ku.zoom.us/my/gjengset MeetingID, if relevant: 437 353 1784Email address to gain access to the thesis: frg@ind.ku.dk You will either receive a copy of the thesis or be informed where you can read a physical copy.Short description of the thesis: Embodied cognition is based on the idea that the body and environment play a central role in how we learn and think. Within STEM education, this has inspired teaching approaches that emphasise movement, interaction, and sensory experiences rather than traditional lectures. Such approaches often prove more engaging and effective, which has popularized embodied cognition in STEM education. In my work, I have reviewed a decade of research on embodied cognition in STEM education to map out this emerging field and worked with STEM teachers to bring this theory into practice. In my thesis, I detail how embodied cognition is currently being used in STEM education and how it can be a beneficial addition to STEM teacher education."
"The Relational Infrastructure of Innovation: What Holds Interdisciplinary Collaboration Together";"SPINE, Department of Science Education, BRIC";"2026-06-10";"14:00";"2026-06-10";"15:30";"Online, https://ucph-ku.zoom.us/j/66870957550?pwd=lbjzetFLbiUK8MqDybANurPf3elO8M.1";"Join us for the kick-off of the SPINE Series with a talk by Dr Laura Kayes. ";" Dr Laura Kayes is visiting Copenhagen from Australia after completing her PhD at RMIT University. Her doctoral thesis is entitled: “The Relational Infrastructure of Innovation: Interdisciplinary Knowledge Building in Australian Higher Education”. The session opens with a short mapping exercise, influenced by yarning, an Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander methodology (Bessarab and Ng'andu, 2010). Participants trace the connections that brought them to their current work: who drew them in, who vouched for them, whose involvement made the work possible. The resulting map renders visible a layer of relational activity that institutional accounts of collaboration tend to omit, and that layer is the subject of the talk. Drawing on a recently completed doctoral study of three Australian university innovation initiatives, Dr Laura Kayes argues that this relational work did not supplement formal coordination structures but substituted for them. The programmes reported interdisciplinary outcomes while depending on particular individuals to sustain coordination their design did not provide. The conditions that shaped these interdisciplinary programmes, compressed timelines and a preference for outputs that are readily demonstrable, also governed which disciplines could establish a foothold. Humanities and social science researchers were repeatedly engaged too late, or for contributions the structure could not register. The study treats this pattern not as a problem of inclusion but as diagnostic: the disciplines an infrastructure cannot accommodate at its margins indicate the limits of what it can accommodate at all. Participants will leave with a map of how they are connected to others in the room, and a way of seeing the relational work that usually holds collaboration together without being noticed. We look forward to welcoming you to the launch of the SPINE Series on June 10th 14:00 CEST (GMT +2). For further information about the SPINE project and research group: SPINE – University of Copenhagen Registration"
"From Joint Action to Mathematical Concepts: The Case of OЯTHO, a Digital–Tabletop Dyadic Game";"The seminar is organized in collaboration between NCUM (National Center for the Development of Mathematics Education) and Department of Science Education";"2026-06-12";"10:00";"2026-06-12";"12:00";"IND, Niels Bohr Bygningen, Jagtvej 155, 2200 Kbh. ";"Professor Dor Abrahamson presents the digital-tabletop game OЯTHO — a cross between Etch-a-Sketch and mini-golf — and what data from thousands of games can tell us. ";"OЯTHO is a dyadic digital-tabletop game — a cross between Etch-a-Sketch and mini-golf — in which a “ball” needs to get from the Start of a maze to its End, yet while one player (the x-axis person) can only move the ball horizontally, the other player (the y-axis person) can only move it vertically. So the two players have to figure out how to move the ball together along diagonal legs of the maze, or else it’s “Game over!” Dor Abrahamson is a professor of Learning Sciences and Human Development in the Graduate School of Education at UC Berkeley. OЯTHO was designed to create opportunities for young players to first encounter the Cartesian system. By figuring out how to move together, children are to cultivate what we call “coordinate perception” — a techno-scientific two-dimensional attention to space whereby an object’s planar location is constituted as a cross-product of its respective x- and y-axis indexical projections, and its anticipated linear trajectory to the next target is likewise socially distributed as orthogonally apportioned axial thrusts. OЯTHO advances through three game-mechanics levels that gradually shift hands-on action to symbolically mediated control, as our designed means of introducing disciplinary re-description of physical enactment in normative semiotic register, namely ordered pairs (e.g., [4, 7]). The game has been on exhibit in the LivingLab wing of the Copernicus Hall of Science in Warsaw, Poland, since the spring of 2023. Ever since, we have collected action logs, so we are now at about .5 million plays. For some of the pairs we also collect audio-video and eye-tracking data. This empirical corpus serves as a large-N research context to evaluate the design conjecture that mathematical concepts can emerge from the discourse that players develop spontaneously as their means of coordinating the enactment of simultaneous joint action. From the perspective of complex dynamic systems, we will consider how the mazes’ structural constraints, such as navigating a narrow branch of the track, give rise to more efficient coordinated action tactics that endure after the constraints have been removed (hysteresis). I will explain the game as exemplifying the action-based genre of the embodied-design framework, share results from our mixed-methods data analyses, raise pedagogical dilemmas around scaffolding curricular objectives in informal contexts, and sketch an underway project using machine-learning to extract optimal teaching practices and implement them in the form of an AI-driven virtual-reality OЯTHO companion for remote learners. Bio Dor Abrahamson is a professor of Learning Sciences and Human Development in the Graduate School of Education. He studies the process of mathematics teaching and learning from the complementary perspectives of cognitive science and socio-cultural theory as these dialogue with the emerging paradigms of embodiment. Abrahamson is a design-based researcher with a broad interest in the relation between physical action and conceptual learning."
"PhD defence by Oriel Caro Miya Marshall";"";"2026-06-12";"14:00";"2026-06-12";"17:00";"Hybrid defence";"Translating Contemporary Astronomy Research into Educational Materials";"Translating Contemporary Astronomy Research into Educational MaterialsAssessment Committee:Associate Professor Adrienne Lorelei Traxler, Department of Science education, University of Copenhagen (Chairperson)Senior Lecturer Jesper Haglund, Karlstads UniversityProfessor Urban Eriksson, University of UppsalaSupervisor(s):Associate Professor Jesper BruunDepartment:Department of Science EducationPlace:The defence is conducted as a hybrid defence.To attend the defence in person:Aula, Room: C.S.002, Prinsstraat 13, 2000 Antwerp, BelgiumTo attend the defence online:Please follow the link to attend the defence online: https://eu.bbcollab.com/guest/2196e4e6cdb24660909f58d5629f6c5d Email address to gain access to the thesis: oriel.marshall@ind.ku.dk You will either receive a copy of the thesis or be informed where you can read a physical copy.Short description of the thesis: Exoplanet science (the study of planets outside of our solar system) is a growing field of astronomical research. The atmospheres of many of these planets are covered by clouds, and lightning is predicted on some. These two phenomena are at the cutting edge of exoplanet science, and this PhD brings them into the classroom through hands-on experiments and inquiry-based science education lessons. Using a combination of network analysis and conceptual blending analysis, this thesis describes how this didactic transposition from research knowledge to taught (and subsequently, learnt) knowledge can occur, and how the resultant lessons from this development were received and understood by students. "
"Demo & Networking: Lyd og historiefortælling som formidling";"Department of Science Education, SciComm";"2026-06-25";"15:00";"2026-06-25";"17:30";"IND, Niels Bohr Bygningen, Jagtvej 2200 Kbh. N";"Denne demo- og netværkssession inviterer dig til at opleve, hvordan lyd og historiefortælling kan skabe nye måder at formidle bæredygtighed på.";"I centrum for sessionen er en live demonstration af et lyd-baseret format udviklet i samarbejde med Copenhagen Zoo. Her præsenteres biodiversitet ikke som abstrakt viden, men som noget, der kan sanses, høres og mærkes gennem kropslig og sanselig deltagelse.Med afsæt i den eksperimentelle lydworkshop, musiker Magma Rea var med til at udvikle og afholde i Zoo sommeren 2025, inviteres du nu til at engagere dig i den grønbrogede tudse gennem lytning, imitation og leg med lyd.Vi skal dog videre end blot en stærk demonstration. Gennem en hands-on øvelse får du selv mulighed for at afprøve arbejdet med lyd og historiefortælling og reflektere over, hvad den gør – ikke kun som formidling af biodiversitet, men som en måde at vække nysgerrighed, opmærksomhed og omsorg.Arrangementet kombinerer en kort teoretisk introduktion med en demonstration af et af de formater, der er udviklet i forskningsprogrammet Sustain-Art-Sci. Herefter udforsker vi sammen, hvordan formatet kan oversættes til din egen praksis – hvad enten det er forskningsformidling, undervisning, arbejdet med udstillinger eller andet. Tilmeld dig ved at skrive til svs@ind.ku.dk senest den 20. juni 2026."
"Autumn School in Governance, Design and Delivery of Interdisciplinary Higher Education";"Katrine Ellemose Lindvig, Associate Professor, Department of Science Education, University of Copenhagen";"2026-09-21";"";"2026-09-25";"";"Department of Science Education, University of Copenhagen  Niels Bohr Bygningen Jagtvej 155A DK-2200 København N Denmark";"How can universities make interdisciplinarity work in practice? This one-week Autumn School in Copenhagen focuses on designing, governing and delivering interdisciplinary education.";"Governance, Design and Delivery of Interdisciplinary Higher Education Interdisciplinary education has become a significant point of development across higher education systems, spanning bachelor’s and master’s programmes, doctoral training and continuing education. At the same time, it has become evident that interdisciplinarity cannot be sustained without appropriate institutional structures. It requires careful design, coordination and ongoing reflection on how knowledge is organised, taught and assessed. Developing interdisciplinary education raises questions that are simultaneously intellectual and institutional. How can different disciplinary traditions be brought into meaningful dialogue within courses and programmes? How should supervision be organised when doctoral candidates work across fields? What constitutes appropriate evaluation criteria for interdisciplinary work? And how can existing structures in higher education support, rather than inadvertently constrain, collaboration across boundaries? Who should apply? The Autumn School is intended for participants who are involved in developing, organising or supporting interdisciplinary education in higher education, and who have (or would like to take on) a role as changemakers in their institutional settings. Relevant participants may include: Academic leaders responsible for interdisciplinary educational innovation Academic staff engaged in interdisciplinary teaching or programme development Doctoral supervisors and researchers working across disciplinary boundaries Professional staff supporting interdisciplinary initiatives or cross faculty collaboration Participants are encouraged to bring questions and examples from their own institutional contexts. What to expect The programme focuses particularly on doctoral training as a key arena for experimentation and institutional development in interdisciplinary education. During the week, participants will engage in: Keynote lectures from international scholars Masterclasses addressing concrete institutional challenges Interactive workshops using research informed tools and case material Structured discussions based on participants’ own experiences The programme also marks the launch of the SPINE project, which examines how collaborative infrastructures at doctoral level can better support interdisciplinary research within existing academic settings, with particular attention to biomedical, natural science and clinical domains. Members of the project’s international advisory board will contribute as speakers and engage directly in discussion with participants. Dedicated time throughout the week will be reserved for exchange and reflection. The aim is to support participants in translating insights and frameworks into concrete steps and actions within their own departments and institutions. Participation Fee The participation fee is 1500 EUR. The fee includes: Attendance at all lectures, masterclasses and workshops A copy of Key Texts on Interdisciplinary Higher Education, edited by Iris van der Tuin Lunch and refreshments throughout the week Reception and conference dinner on Thursday evening The fee also covers participation in the international exchange and the follow up online reunion in spring 2027. Registration process 1. Submit a short letter (under the Upload: Motivation and Relevance Letter tab) explaining why you are interested in participating in the Autumn School and how the program is relevant to your work. 2. After positive evaluation of the submitted Motivation & Relevance letter you will receive an invitation link to complete the registration. Important dates Deadline for submitting the motivation letter: June 1 at 12:00 noon Deadline for completing registration: June 29 at 12:00 noon Deadline for cancellation without fee: June 29 at 12:00 noon SPINE Symposium: 24 September 13:30 - 17:00 Follow-up online session: Spring 2027 "