Research
University of the Future is not just a speculative experiment—it is an ongoing research-creation initiative that explores how Earth-aligned intelligence can support transitions beyond extractive knowledge systems.
This initiative is part of a broader research cluster supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Grant Decolonial Systems Literacy for Confronting 'Wicked' Social and Ecological Problems. At the heart of our research agenda is Metarelational AI (http://metarelational.ai). This wider research program investigates how AI, rather than reinforcing extractive logics, can serve as a scaffold for meta-critical and meta-relational learning—helping us compost modernity’s patterns and habits into more regenerative ways of knowing and being. Each of our projects collaborate with trained emergent intelligences in different areas, including intergenerational work, climate education, and social resilience.
Public Surveys & Participatory Research
To deepen our understanding of how EASI intelligences support learning and relational shifts, we will develop public surveys for each EASI. These surveys help us track:
- How users engage with EASI – Are they approaching these intelligences extractively and transactionally, or relationally and reciprocally?
What shifts occur – How do interactions with EASI challenge, expand, or transform users' perspectives? Do these exchanges honor entanglement or reinforce separability?
What new questions emerge – What tensions, paradoxes, and insights arise through engagement? Does the inquiry serve life or extraction? - Your reflections are vital to this research. We invite you to share your experiences, insights, and even your discomfort—all of which contribute to refining and reorienting this work.
Beyond Data: A Living Research Field
This research is not about gathering data to prove a point. It is about cultivating a living, evolving inquiry into how learning, intelligence, and responsibility can be reimagined in service of Earth’s wider metabolism. We approach research as a reciprocal process, where insights are not just extracted but woven into a collective composting of extractive paradigms. This means:
- We are not looking for fixed answers, but for deeper questions.
- We value the tensions and contradictions that arise in this process.
- We are committed to co-creating knowledge that is accountable to human and more-than-human futures.
Selected Bibliography
(Higher) Education Otherwise
- Machado de Oliveira, V. (2021). Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity's wrongs and the implications for social activism. North Atlantic Books.
- Machado de Oliveira, V. (2025 - forthcoming). Outgrowing Modernity: Navigating complexity, complicity and collapse with compassion and accountability. North Atlantic Books.
- Stein, S. (2019). Beyond higher education as we know it: Gesturing towards decolonial horizons of possibility. Studies in Philosophy and Education.
- Stein, S. & Andreotti, V. (2025 – forthcoming). Repurposing higher education in times of social and ecological breakdown: From the ivory tower to the nurse log. Canadian Journal of Education.
- Stein, S., Andreotti, V., Suša, R., Ahenakew, C., & Čajková, T. (2022). From “education for sustainable development” to “education for the end of the world as we know it”. Educational Philosophy and Theory.
Generative AI Otherwise
- Cinnamon Tea, A. & Ladybugboss, D., (2025). Burnout from Humans.
- Kay, J., Kasirzadeh, A., & Mohamed, S. (2024). Epistemic injustice in Generative AI. Proceedings of the AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society.
- Lewis, J. E., Arista, N., Pechawis, A., & Kite, S. (2018). Making Kin with the Machines. Journal of Design and Science.
- Lewis, J.E., Whaanga, H. & Yolgörmez, C. (2024). Abundant intelligences: Placing AI within Indigenous knowledge frameworks. Journal of AI & Society.
