A Conversation on Becoming Agents for Transformation in Higher Education Co-Creating a Regenerative Academic Developmental Learning Space

Through a conversational, co-constructed, critical autoethnography we present student and lecturer experiences with an educational experiment undertaken at the University of Amsterdam since 2017. Critical Development and Diversity Explorations (CDDE) is inspired by peacebuilding and decolonial peace education praxes and forms our humble attempt to translate these into practice. In doing so, we draw on regenerative, transformative and transgressive thinking. This is the story of how we came to be, how we built a space that stimulates necessary collective reflections on understanding, redefining and contesting power dynamics, and allowing us the freedom to imagine alternatives. We observe how CDDE has led to small transformations, sometimes at an individual level, and sometimes leading to micro-changes in our immediate environment, such as in our university department.