By Dr Giovanna Caetano Da Silva

From 16 to 18 June, Karin Murris visited the Faculty of Education at the University of Seville, where she gave a keynote speech entitled ‘What Else Is Going On? Posthumanist Pedagogies and Education Research in the Age of AI and the Anthropocene’.

Karin did not come alone but brought with her the traces of the Small Matters community and past/future encounters inhabiting the University of Seville. On the patio of the faculty, children from Finland, memories of cemeteries walk, play dough, strings and philosophical questions re-membered small matters.

 

An exhibition invited observers to consider how deeply death and dying can be entangled in everyday life, ‘even’ in children’s discussions. Stories of missing cats, companion dogs, human families and characters are not only adults’ concerns. This is why a completely different way of thinking and living is needed.

For Karin, sensing, tracing, attuning, attending and making-with are some of the tools we can ‘start’ to think with. All of this builds on the question: How can we talk to children about death?