Conference Agenda

Although gender-related educational research is often presented as a means of social change, it also involves significant ethical, epistemological, and political risks. For example, research conducted in school settings may inadvertently normalise gender differences, reproduce the very stereotypes it seeks to dismantle, or contribute to epistemic injustice (Fricker, 2007) by silencing marginalised voices and rendering certain subjectivities unintelligible. These risks are particularly acute when addressing sensitive issues such as gender-based violence (GBV).

Drawing on empirical material and field experience from a feminist ethnography conducted in lower secondary schools in Italy, this paper considers the conditions necessary for research on GBV in education to evolve from knowledge production into a relational, pedagogical and political practice. Rather than viewing research as an external evaluation of school practices, the study reimagines education research as an embedded process of building alliances with school communities. In this approach, teachers and students are recognised as valuable contributors to knowledge and are involved as co-researchers, rather than being viewed as mere subjects of study.

This paper addresses two interrelated questions: how do research practices themselves contribute to the shaping of gendered meanings, power relations, and opportunities for change within school contexts? And under what conditions can research into gender-based violence in education actively transform the environments in which it is conducted?

These questions are situated within the contemporary European context, in which gender and sexuality education is increasingly influenced by political tensions, institutional limitations and public disputes. In many countries, including Italy, educational work on gender is frequently restricted or delegitimised, despite the fact that its importance for preventing gender-based violence is recognised internationally. Against this backdrop, the paper explores the potential of research to foster dialogue, critical engagement and shared responsibility, even when formal educational interventions are limited.

Drawing on feminist epistemologies and critical pedagogy, the study explores theories of situated knowledge, standpoint epistemology and epistemic injustice. From this perspective, research is understood as inherently situated and embodied; the questions asked, the methods employed, and the interpretations produced are all embedded in specific historical, cultural, and institutional contexts. This is particularly pertinent in the context of research on gender-based violence, where methodological choices can inadvertently perpetuate dominant and stereotypical gender representations.

The paper goes on to examine issues of power and participation within the research relationship and in schools as institutional settings. Schools are considered places where gendered, racialised, class-based and ableist norms are created and controlled, frequently through adult-centred assumptions about authority, knowledge and legitimacy. At the same time, the study emphasises the capacity of collaborative and reflexive research practices to amplify marginalised voices, including those of LGBTQ+ students, racialised young people, and students who do not adhere to traditional gender norms.

A central focus of the paper is consent in research, which is understood as an ongoing, relational and reversible process, rather than a one-off procedural requirement. In research on gender-based violence with pre-adolescents, consent is inextricably linked to education about consent itself. The paper argues that research practices can facilitate dialogue with students about consent, agency and boundaries.

Through critical reflection on the researcher's positioning within these power relations, the paper addresses the accountability of education researchers in relation to not only research outcomes, but also the relationships, exclusions and possibilities that research practices actively produce within educational communities.

This paper addresses the changing conditions and potentials of education research by focusing on adult and informal education as a critical site where knowing and acting intersect. It explores how biographical “moments of enough” operate as informal learning processes and how they challenge traditional understandings of what counts as educational knowledge, evidence, and impact.

The central research question guiding the study is:
How can biographical moments of rupture in adult women’s lives be understood as forms of informal learning, and what do they reveal about the changing epistemological conditions of education research?

The paper argues that contemporary education research – particularly in adult education – is increasingly confronted with forms of learning that occur outside institutional settings, curricula, and measurable outcomes. These learning processes are often triggered by lived experiences of inequality, exhaustion, and reflexive insight rather than by formal educational interventions. Gendered “moments of enough” are conceptualised here as critical biographical ruptures in which accumulated informal learning translates into action.

The theoretical framework draws on biographical learning theory (Alheit), transformative learning (Mezirow, Illeris), feminist epistemology (Butler), and reflexivity theory (Archer). Together, these perspectives allow for a reconceptualisation of informal learning not merely as tacit or incidental, but as epistemically significant and socially situated. From this viewpoint, knowing is produced through experience, reflection, and confrontation with structural constraints, while acting becomes an integral part of the learning process.

By foregrounding adult informal learning, the paper responds directly to the Special Call’s concern with the evolving role of education research. It positions education research as a field that must grapple with blurred boundaries between research, learning, and action, and with growing expectations regarding social relevance, responsibility, and impact. In this sense, the study treats education research itself as a reflexive practice embedded in power relations and ethical commitments.

Importantly, the paper contributes to ongoing methodological and epistemological debates by questioning dominant assumptions about where learning takes place, how it can be recognised, and whose knowledge is considered legitimate. By focusing on biographical ruptures rather than linear learning trajectories, it highlights the limitations of outcome-orientated and institution-centred research models. Instead, it proposes an understanding of adult learning as discontinuous, emotionally charged, and deeply entangled with questions of power, gender, and agency.

The European and international dimension is addressed through the relevance of adult informal learning in contemporary European contexts marked by precarity, gender inequality, changing labour markets, and policy-driven lifelong learning agendas. The paper situates individual biographies within broader European debates on gender equality, adult education, and the limits of institutional learning frameworks.

In doing so, it also engages with current European discussions on research impact and responsibility, suggesting that education research must develop conceptual tools capable of capturing learning processes that resist easy measurement but carry significant transformative potential.

Ultimately, the paper argues that recognising biographical ruptures as sites of informal learning expands the potential of education research. It invites researchers to reconsider dominant notions of evidence, validity, and impact, and to acknowledge moments where knowing compels acting as central to understanding learning in adult life.

Despite decades of legislative work advancing progressive frameworks, educational reforms towards democratic and sustainable goals, and the turn to diversity training in organizations, everyday interactions remain problematic. Institutional design is only a fraction of what effectively sustains an ethical and just coexistence. Divisive, discriminatory, unfair, and ecologically unsustainable ideas and behaviors continue shaping decision making, social dynamics and digital interaction. Transforming harmful behavior and unjust conditions that affect historically marginalized groups—along lines of gender, race, ability, class, and sexuality—requires educational and community practices that adequately engage critically not just with norms and laws, but with attitudes and beliefs. The need to resist these conditions has been for decades paired with the broader call for unlearning racist, sexist, gender-normative, ableist, classist and anthropocentric biases and prejudices that hold these issues in place. What prevents these educational efforts from translating into sustained transformation?

I propose to present a critical analysis of how "unlearning" has been conceptualized across three scholarly traditions—Organizational Learning, Transformative Learning, and Decolonial Feminist scholarship, based on the literature review of my PhD research. The metaphors each tradition uses to describe unlearning or transformation reveal distinct and partially shared assumptions about human agency and motivation. I suggest that transformation's central difficulty, both in theory (particularly in the tradition inaugurated by Jack Mezirow) and in many activist and community practices, resides in approaching change as the direct or automatic effect of exercising critical reflection (a cognitive task) individually or collectively. This framing allows scholars to theorize transformation without confronting what prevents us from taking it to action. If unlearning and actual resistance to injustice and discrimination are to be feasible and durable, we cannot ignore the strains and emotional ambivalence that change entails: the risk it poses to the benefits (privileges) we get from them one way or another.

Supported in Laurent Berlant and Sara Ahmed’s work and other feminist and postcolonial authors, I propose the most insidious obstacle to people’s everyday commitment to justice isn't achieving adequate norms or understanding of systemic injustices. The decisive step lies in tackling the investments and grounding all of us, in the broad variance of positionalities, with small or large privileges, already have in such unequal structures.

Actual change would force us to negotiate our belongings and relinquish the advantages we enjoy in an unequal world, but traditional transformative education literature seems to lack a robust account of change to address this motivational complexity. In evading the social entanglements that protect privilege and postponing the empirical question on how to overcome this resistance, theoretical framings leave us with high hopes but no adequate tools. My analysis foregrounds what two of these traditions systematically exclude: the tight relationship between positionality and identity, between structural positions and privilege as lived investment. I argue transformation requires confronting these tensions, and propose a redefinition of agency as situated in our everyday investments, relationships, and belongings. These grounds for action and motivation must be recognized but also held accountable if we are to move on towards viable frames of solidarity and coexistence.