EPI∙STEM PODCAST EPISODE 27

In this episode of the EPI·STEM podcast, Geraldine SimmiePhD and Michelle Starr PhD welcome Professor Laura Colucci-Gray as their special guest. Professor Colucci-Gray is the Professor of Science Education in the School of Education at Moray House, University of Edinburgh, Scotland. Earlier this summer, Professor Laura Colucci-Gray was aninvited keynote speaker at the European Science Education Research Association (ESERA) 2025 conference in Copenhagen. Laura introduced the science education delegates and researchers to her theorisations in relation to the importance of the arts positioned on an equal footing with the sciences inscience education and sustainability.In 2017, Prof Colucci-Gray worked with Professor Simmie andProfessor Sibel Erduran, Professor of STEM Education at the University of Oxford and former Director of EPI∙STEM, on a commissioned report for the British Education Research Association (BERA) on the future potential and challenges of STEAM education. Prof Colucci-Gray takes a feminist and new materialist approach to science education and theorises affectivity beyond evidence, for the importance of social and emotional development, not only for human self-flourishing but for capacity to be moved (affected) to care for others in the wider world, for the greater good and sustainability of democratic society, the economy and the environment.As well as providing rich conceptualisations of thetransdisciplinary nature of science education, and the crucial role of the arts, Professor Laura Colucci-Gray works as an expert researcher in research and development projects that make a difference to embodied and place-based learning practices. Recently, Laura working with a team of teacher educators andartists at the University of Edinburgh presented their STEAM education project, the GARDEN AS A PROVOCATION. The project invited science teachers to step into the garden as a metaphor and as a reality, for a new way of seeing,experiencing and experimenting with science in the wider world, inspiring arts-based pedagogies for working in democratic ways with students, to learn science in ways that are ethical, open, contemplative, sceptical and while learning to care for self, others and the environment.The music selection today is by Caoimhe Fitzpatrick, afirst-year student in the BA in World Music in the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at the University of Limerick. Here Caoimhe plays acoustic guitar and sings her original composition on human freedom, called ‘Liberties Baby’.