Kim Holflod

Profile

Research Areas 

My research and development activities focus on how we can create and develop future education based on new and alternative understandings of participation, collaboration, and relationality – and through playful, creative, and aesthetic methods. Through design-based and co-creative approaches, I have examined interdisciplinary and interprofessional education, playful education and pedagogy, and game-based innovation in culture – and the meanings, opportunities, and challenges it can create for contemporary and future pedagogy and education.

I am a steering group member at the Center for Higher Education Futures (AU), steering group member and editor at the Danish Journal of Education Studies (DJES), and coordinator for the Unit for Play Research (DPU, AU). I, moreover, participate in various research programs and networks related to future technologies, digital aesthetics, professional research, and play research. Additionally, I deliver presentations and workshops as an expert and consultant in play, collaboration/co-creation, and utopias in relation to pedagogy, education, and society.

Current Research and Development

I am currently engaged in three research and development projects:

'EPIC-WE: Empowered Participation through Ideating Cultural Worlds and Environments' is a Horizon Europe-funded project (2023-26) aimed at creating opportunities for young people's empowered participation in European culture and their own cultural futures through imagining, creating, and exchanging cultural values and heritage through game-making. The project investigates and develops new theories, models, and practices for cultural participation, empowered participation, cross-sectoral innovation, and game development formats at the intersection of culture, games, values, and citizenship across five European countries. My roles in EPIC-WE are partly as a researcher and partly as a task lead and hub lead. https://epic-we.eu/

'P+L Praxis' (2023-26) is a project funded by the LEGO Foundation and the Danish University Colleges of Professions aimed at co-creating and developing new, versatile, and inclusive participation opportunities for children and young people in daycare and school – and in education and practice – through the qualities and characteristics of play. https://playful-learning.dk/pl-praxis/  

'Signature Pedagogy in Professional Education' is a smaller project in which I investigate signature pedagogy in professional education, how it differs from “professional didactics” and “professional education didactics”, and how it can contribute to new ways of thinking, talking about, and practising pedagogy and education.

Teaching and Supervision

I particularly teach and supervise in interdisciplinary, interprofessional, and cross-sectoral collaboration, as well as play theory, design theory, speculative methods, educational technology, and education in co-creative, dialogical, and utopian perspectives.