Dr. Caroline Blanvillain, MCF (University of Montpellier, France)
Dr. Elvira Crois, Assist. Prof. (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)
Prof. Wen-Shu Lai (National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taiwan)
Dr. Chiaki Tokui, Lecturer (University of Welfare, Japan) & Prof. Tetsuya Kono (Rikkyo University, Japan)
Dr. Yajuan Wang, Αssoc. Prof. (School of Philosophy, Nankai University, China)
Dr. Caroline Blanvillain, MCF (University of Montpellier, France)

Using Images: A Methodology for a Dialogic Approach to Knowledge
This conference aims to examine the image, long confined to an illustrative function, as both a catalyst for dialogue and an embodiment of dialogue. Between beginnings and endings, the image raises a major tension: how can we harness the image as a catalyst for dialogue without compromising the requirements of intelligibility and scientific objectivity? After mapping, in an exploratory and epistemological manner, the various ways of engaging in dialogue through images (Alloa (ed.), 2010, 2017; Mitchell, 2004; Didi-Huberman, 1990, 2025), we will examine the methods and approaches used to construct and produce images in relation to the transmission of knowledge in education.. The challenge will be to identify the interstices that allow for the conception and communication of thought without freezing it in place, to delineate the boundaries between thought and materialization, and to take into account the suggestive power of the image (Mondzain, 2007).
Furthermore, on the one hand, we will demonstrate that, through its nonlinear forms, the image opens up an exploratory and experiential space where thought is constructed in ways other than through discursive language (Caraës & Marchand-Zanartu, 2011; Belting, 2004). It thus constitutes a heuristic labyrinth, capable of revealing complex relationships between heterogeneous elements. To this end, we will draw on François Jullien’s (2012) concept of “écart”: the “écart” as “a figure, not of order, but of disruption, with an exploratory purpose.” Indeed, the image can be conceived as a space of deviation, enabling the renewal of modes of dialogue and the opening of new fields of exploration.
Furthermore, to examine the thresholds of intelligibility, we will study hybrid forms of expression that combine text and image (signs, diagrams, graphics, photographs, drawings, etc.) as complementary modes of dialogue in the context of knowledge transmission. The aim is not to pit these forms against one another, but to examine mechanisms capable of maintaining a balance between interpretive openness and shared intelligibility (Chartier, 2005), while focusing our attention on the demands of relationships.
The power of images comes with significant limitations. Their meaning is never immediately apparent, and an abundance of images does not guarantee their understanding. An image produces meaning only when embedded within a shared frame of reference. Furthermore, its reception is deeply subjective, dependent on individuals’ experiences and imaginations, and contextual, varying across cultures (Pinotte & Somaini, 2025). Because this variability undermines understanding in dialogue, we will pay particular attention to the resonances, correspondences, and arrangements that emerge across multiple vectors.
Engaging in dialogue with images and images of dialogue regarding knowledge invites us to develop a new epistemology grounded in the relationship between forms, perspectives, and contexts, in order to produce knowledge that is both rigorous and open.
Bibliography
Alloa, E. (éd.), (2017). Penser l’image. Volume 3 – Comment lire les images ? Dijon, Presses du Réel.
Alloa, E. (éd.), (2010). Penser l’image. Dijon, Presses du Réel.
Caraës, M.-H. & Marchand-Zanartu, N. (2011). Images de pensée. Paris, Réunion des Musées Nationaux.
Belting, H. (2004). Pour une anthropologie des images. Paris, Gallimard.
Chartier, R. (2005). Inscrire et effacer : culture écrite et littérature (XIe – XVIIIe siècle). Paris, EHESS, Gallimard, Seuil.
Berger, J. (2014). Voir le voir. Paris, B42-51.
Didi-Huberman, G. (1990). Devant l’image. Questions posées aux fins d’une histoire de l’art. Paris, Minuit.
Didi-Huberman, G. (2025). Celui par qui s’ouvre la terre. Saint Georges, versions d’une légende. Paris, Gallimard
Jullien, F (2012). L’écart et l’entre. Ou comment penser l’altérité. Leçon inaugurale de la Chaire sur l’Altérité, Collège d’études mondiales. ⟨halshs-00677232⟩
Mitchell, W. J. T. (2018). Iconologie. Image, texte, idéologie. Paris, Les Prairies ordinaires.
Mondzain, M.-J. (2007). Homo spectator. Paris, Bayard.
Pinotti, A. & Somaini, A. (2022). Culture visuelle. Images, regards, médias, dispositifs. Dijon, Presses du Réel.
Warburg, A. (2012). L’Atlas mnémosyne. Paris, Atelier de l’écarquillé.
Warburg, A. (2003). Le Rituel du serpent : Récit d’un voyage en pays pueblo. Paris, Macula.
Curriculum Vitae
Caroline Blanvillain (caroline.blanvillain@umontpellier.fr) is an associate professor of aesthetics and art sciences, specializing in the visual arts, at the Faculty of Education at the University of Montpellier. She is affiliated with the Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Research in Didactics, Education, and Training (LIRDEF). Her scholarly work focuses on two research themes: the aesthetics of the image and artistic training; these themes are interconnected through the concepts of Bild and Bildung and are explored through three main areas of focus: the image, the arts, and the person.
Dr. Elvira Crois, Assist. Prof. (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)

Dialogic Art for Difference
This lecture explores the potential of dialogic artistic practices to cultivate meaningful engagement across difference. Beginning with the question of what constitutes dialogue and how dialogic art can be understood, the session examines dialogue not as a search for consensus, but as a practice of encountering plurality, uncertainty, and dissensus. Drawing on perspectives from education, philosophy, and contemporary art, participants will consider how dialogic approaches can foster the capacities needed to navigate complex social and ecological challenges, including openness to multiple worldviews, reflexivity, and collaborative knowledge creation.
The lecture connects dialogic art to broader educational and scholarly movements such as pluriversal perspectives, highlighting its relevance for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary collaboration. Through examples including Building Conversation (NL) and Katrien Oosterlinck (BE), and the presenter’s own practice of creative reflection, the session will illustrate how artistic practices can create spaces for dialogue, mutual learning, and transformative encounter across differences.
Curriculum Vitae
Elvira Crois (Elvira.Crois@vub.be) is Assistant Professor and postdoctoral researcher in arts education at Brussels research centre for Innovation in Learning and Diversity [BILD] at Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Their research focuses on participatory processes in the arts, education, and research. In the arts, they explore audience participation and artistic strategies of worldmaking. In education, they study playful and embodied learning with regards to ecology and justice. In research, they innovate methodologies by exploring participatory and arts-based methods for data collection, dramaturgical practice, creative analysis, and embedded reflective strategies for transdisciplinary research.
Prof. Wen-Shu Lai (National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taiwan)

Net Zero through Green Curating
Green curation reduces the carbon footprint of art and cultural exhibits by utilizing sustainable materials, minimizing shipping, and rethinking design. This initiative aims to transform public perception and action regarding climate change through emotional experiences in art curation while also enhancing understanding of a net-zero society. The lecture will focus on the 3R Carbon Reduction Principles: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle, as well as Emotional Transformation in Green Curation. Through green curation and effective communication, we aim to raise public awareness and promote practices that support net zero, improve multispecies literacy, challenge anthropocentrism, and incorporate perspectives of more-than-human.
Curriculum Vitae
Wen-Shu Lai (wslai@nycu.edu.tw) holds an MA and MFA in Art and Design, as well as a Doctoral degree in Art Education from the University of Iowa. Currently, she is a professor at the Institute of Applied Arts, where she is also the Dean of the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, and leads the Interrogative transArt Lab. As an artist, Lai focuses on ontological inquiries. Her research interests encompass Art Intervention, Cross-disciplinary Arts, Interrogative Design, Hermeneutic Theory, Phantom Narratives, and Artist’s Books.
Dr. Chiaki Tokui, Lecturer (University of Welfare, Japan) & Prof. Tetsuya Kono (Rikkyo University, Japan)
A Phenomenological Qualitative Study of Classroom Culture and Philosophical Practice:
What Do Students Experience in an Increasingly Divided Classroom?
The collapse of classroom communities directly threatens the fundamental right to education. In Japan, the number of non-attending students has reached a record 350,000, while a fiscal year 2025 survey by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT, 2026) revealed that a record 1,319 primary and secondary school teachers left their positions due to mental health issues. These trends indicate a pervasive structural crisis: schools are increasingly failing to serve as psychologically safe learning environments for both students and educators.
This climate of division is particularly acute in Japanese general-education high schools. Despite fixed classroom cohorts and limited elective coursework, intense intra-class factionalism, exclusionary peer dynamics, and severe reluctance to voice individual opinions frequently arise. Compounded by entrance-exam-driven instruction, many students complete terms without knowing their peers’ names, fostering pervasive alienation and mutual hostility.
In response to practitioner requests to cultivate an environment conducive to authentic dialogue, the authors implemented a year-long intervention of philosophical practices tailored for community reconstruction. Adopting a phenomenological qualitative framework, this study examines what changes continuous philosophical inquiry induces in students within an entrenched classroom divide, focusing on their lived experiences.
This presentation proceeds in three parts. First, we outline the historical trajectory and current landscape of philosophical practice in Japan, contextualizing our collaborative initiatives. Second, we articulate the phenomenological qualitative methodology employed. Finally, we synthesize findings from the year-long intervention and in-depth student interviews to delineate the experiential shifts occurring when philosophical dialogue is embedded in deeply fragmented school environments.
References
Curriculum Vitae
Chiaki Tokui
Ph.D. (Education), University of Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan
Lecturer, Department of Child Studies, Shizuoka University of Welfare, Shizuoka, Japan
Her main research interests lie in education and philosophy for children. She engages in both research and practice in schools and communities, with a recent focus on children’s lived experiences from a phenomenological perspective.
Kono, Tetsuya
PhD (philosophy), Keio University, Tokyo, Japan
Professor of the Department of Education at Rikkyo University, Tokyo, Japan
Member of the Science Council of Japan (the 26th–27th Term)
His main research interests lie in phenomenology, philosophy of mind, and philosophical psychology. He has been practicing children’s philosophy for many years, from preschoolers to high school students, in various locations in Japan and overseas. He is also concerned in environmental philosophy and environmental ethics.
Major Publications (books, all in Japanese):
Lectures on the Philosophy of Education(2025), Ma’ai as distancing: An Exploration of Ecological Phenomenology (2022), When People Talk, They Are Not Thinking: A Philosophy of Dialogue and Thought (2019), Everything Will Revert to Wild Someday (2016), etc.
Dr. Yajuan Wang, Αssoc. Prof. (School of Philosophy, Nankai University, China)

Enacting Growth: A Phenomenological and Enactivist Framework for Educational Research
Educational research struggles with an enduring tension between the continuous, processual nature of human growth and measurement models that rely on quantifiable, staged states. While educational phenomenology restores attention to the child life-world and pedagogical tact, its contributions remain confined to descriptive interpretation. Merleau-Ponty’s Sorbonne lectures on child psychology and pedagogy overcome this limitation by moving beyond the atomistic stage models of traditional developmental psychology, establishing a framework that treats growth as the temporal unfolding of embodied experience. Cognitive enactivism advances this trajectory as Ezequiel Di Paolo introduces adaptivity into the autopoietic framework, bringing genuine temporality and historical depth to living systems. Building on this foundation, Thomas Fuchs extends these dynamics into neurobiology, defining learning as the specialized process through which living systems alter their internal structures over time. Spanning biological, psychological, and cultural timescales, this framework conceptualizes growth as a generative coupling driven by embodied memory and neural reorganization. This approach ultimately transforms educational assessment by anchoring development within the cross-temporal scale of embodiment, offering a robust mechanism to capture the continuous nature of growth with both theoretical depth and practical explanatory power.
Curriculum Vitae
Dr. Yajuan Wang (wang.sophie2013@gmail.com) is an Associate Professor in the School of Philosophy at Nankai University. Her research centers on French philosophy and Western Marxism, with specialized expertise in the phenomenology of the body and the philosophy of nature. Within phenomenological theory, she examines Merleau-Ponty’s creative breakthroughs relative to Husserlian phenomenology, guided by the core themes of nature and history. She is the author of two monographs: Nature and Logos: Merleau-Ponty’s Later Thought and Its Relation to Husserl (Chinese Social Sciences Press, July 2022) and The Way toward Nature: Merleau-Ponty between Phenomenology and Ontology (Chinese Social Sciences Press, October 2014). Her translation of Merleau-Ponty’s Nature was short-listed for the 17th Fu Lei Translation and Publishing Award, and she has published over forty academic articles. Bridging the phenomenology of the body with art, French Marxism, and embodied cognition, her work re-establishes Merleau-Ponty’s place within the intellectual genealogy of French Marxism and brings embodiment-oriented phenomenology into active dialogue with biology and cognitive science.