PhD Courses in Denmark

Course description

This interdisciplinary PhD course seeks to bring together PhD students across universities, faculties and disciplines to explore the question of what happens to practices of care in times of crises. As the authors of "The Care Manifesto" (2020) write:”What would happen if we were to begin instead to put care at the very centre of life?" (p 5).

The concept of care has witnessed a veritable upsurge in recent years, in academic scholarship, numerous art exhibitions and literary works, as well as in public discourse. however care is also, still undertheorised and lacks sufficient conceptual clarity and scope across private/professional relations, institutional and political organisations (Winther-Lindqvist 2023). One possible explanation to the current discussions, is that the better care works, the less visible it becomes, the less people talk about it. The more care is in crisis, the more people talk about it. And most scholars agree that we are facing a care crisis. 

In this PhD course we will dive deeply into this topic of care in times of crises. We will look into the scholarship and the variuos understandings and definitions of care, from feminist movements from the 1970s to Joan Tronto's seminal work "Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care" (1993) to more contemporary theories such as María Puig de la Bellacasa's "Matters of Care" (2017), in which she connects care to ecology, and  M. E. O'Brien's "Family Abolition. Capitalism and the Communizing of Care", in which she writes: "Human life depends on care. We are all inescapably interdependent" (p. 6)

Care is not a given, nor is it, inherently, good. Care is political, conflictual and essential. For this reason we will critically examine the violent, exploitative and colonial aspects of care practices; the local and/or global inequalities of care work; and the ever-increasing care-washing in contemporary societies. Seeking to transpose the entry point of care analysis from the heteronormative family as a privatized unit of care to other more political, even planetary, situations and relations, we will also touch upon topics such as earth-care and care as a transformative step towards green transition in education as in climate activism. We will explore care in its broader existential psychological aspects, as connected to emotions such as grief and hope, to the economics of care, care in aesthetic expressions, and transnational infrastructures of care.

This PhD course, in other words, invites students to engage with a diverse array of perspectives - from pedagogy to psychology to philosophy - and from the fields of art, activism, and academia to explore critical and/other transformative approaches to the concept of care.

Aim

The students will

• Become familiar with the state of the art within care research from an interdisciplinary perspectives.
• Explore and qualify the care dimensions relevant to their own current research projects.
• Strengthen their theoretical and practical knowledge of care
• Stimulate critical reflections 
• Connecting personal with political and planetary aspects of caring
• Aquire tools for applying care-related issues in clinical and pedagogical work
• Work wih care in connection to other existential phenomena such as grief, hope and love
• World-care - the relation between ecology and care - planetary crisis and care crisis in art and education. 

Target group/Participants

• The course is relevant to PhD students at both early and later stages 

Language 

• English

Form

The PhD course will consist of three days, with a different organizing theme for each day, with the key-person from the organising group and an invited keynote that match the theme. Each day involves a 
a mix of lectures/keynotes followed by group work, and afternoon seminars.

• Day 1: Care and existence  - Alfred Sköld and NN
• Day 2: Care and pedagogy - Ditte Winther-Lindqvist and NN
• Day 3: Care and aesthetics - Mikkel Frantzen and NN

Aside from the classical lectures and group work formats, we also plan to do walk-and-talks, reading-group session, poetry workshop and visitors from practice who come and inspire/provoke/move us 

ECTS-credits

• 3

Lecturers

• Ditte Winther-Lindqvist
• Alfred Sköld
• Mikkel Krause Frantzen
• Cheryl Mattingly
• Cassie Thornton

Venue

• 11 June 2025. 09.00-15.30: Emdrupvej 101 , 2400 København NV. Building 7210/A, room 201
• 12 June 2025. 09.00-15.30: Emdrupvej 101 , 2400 København NV. Building 7210/A, room 201
• 13 June 2025. 09.00-15.30: Emdrupvej 101 , 2400 København NV. Building 7210/A, room 201