PROGRAMME
Registration Link: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/e/zKFqVAkWH8
Day 1 – Engaging the THUAS Community
Learning in Relation: Discomfort and the Everyday Practice of Affective Education
Day 1 centers on the lived experiences of students, teachers, and staff at THUAS. It explores how discomfort emerges in everyday learning encounters—not as failure, but as a potential space of ethical engagement, emotional growth, and relational transformation. It also focuses on what is needed for a university to hold a space where learning from emotions is central and what we can learn from the dispute resolution practice regarding working with emotions. Through dialogue, co-creation, and embodied practice, this day invites participants to rethink student–teacher relationships not simply as instructional roles, but as affective partnerships grounded in trust, vulnerability, and mutual learning. Together, we will ask: What does it mean to teach with rather than to? How do we co-create learning spaces where discomfort is held, not silenced? Throughout the day, we will refer to different pedagogical approaches, including pedagogy of discomfort, and approaches from outside the educational field, such as restorative practices and dispute resolution practices, including peer mediation.
Audience: THUAS students, teachers, staff, Comenius project participants, external speakers
Location: THUAS Campus – Innovation Playground and other locations within THUAS
Morning
09:00 – 09:30 | Arrival & Coffee
A gentle start: reconnect, breathe, and prepare to be present.
09:30 – 09:45 | Opening Words: Holding Space for Discomfort [Innovation Playground ]
With: Barbara Warwas & Naomi van Stapele
A shared grounding in why discomfort matters at THUAS — and why now.
09:45 – 11:00 | Keynote Panel: Setting up the Scene “Why Emotions Matter in Education and Beyond” [Innovation Playground ]
This panel opens space to acknowledge the emotional dimensions of learning from both student and teacher perspectives. It also discusses the role of emotions in building a restorative university and the need to work with emotions in the dispute resolution practice.
Topics:
Why emotions matter in the classroom, Mi Jung van der Velde (THUAS)
Emotions in mediation, experiences from professional practise, Tabitha van den Berg (Mediation Amsterdam)
Emotions and the rule of law, Tamara Takács (THUAS)
This panel opens space to acknowledge the emotional dimensions of learning from both student and teacher perspectives.
Moderated by Kornel Herold (student-leader, THUAS)
11:00 – 11:15 | Break
11:15 – 12:30 | Dialogue Circles – “Discomfort in the Classroom”
Small circles to foster dialogue among teachers, staff and students to explore their own experiences of discomfort, silence, and vulnerability in the classroom—and what these moments taught them. Parallel sessions that provide for discussions in Dutch and in English.
Parallel Session 1: Discomfort in the classroom: teachers’ perspective (Moderated by Antje Gerner and Emma Prins, THUAS)
Teachers’ perspective: exploring challenges, discussing responses, highlighting gaps
Parallel Session 2: Ongemakkelijke situaties in de klas: docentperspectief (Moderated by Marjoleine Nes and Darisa Quant, THUAS)
Parallel Session 3: Discomfort in the Classroom: students' perspective (Moderated by student-leaders THUAS)
Parallel Session 4: Ongemakkelijke situaties in de klas: studentperspectief (Moderated by student-leaders THUAS)
Afternoon
12:30 – 13:30 | Lunch (with Themed Tables)
Connect over lunch at tables themed around shared experiences: “When I Felt Seen,” “Navigating Conflict,” “Teaching with Uncertainty (for example, connecting back to the dialogue circle of teachers).”
13:30 – 15:00 | Workshop Tracks – Practicing Relational Pedagogy
Choose one hands-on session:
• Moeilijke gesprekken in de klas: manieren om in verbinding te blijven, Marjoleine Nes (THUAS)
• Peer Mediation in Action – An introduction to the conflict competency training through peer mediation role plays, Helen Winter (Pepperdine University)
15:00 – 15:15 | Break
15:15 – 17:00 | Co-Creation Lab – “Designing THUAS Relational Peer Mediation Blueprint as the model of Affective Learning” (Laurence Guerin, Barbara Warwas, Naomi van Stapele and the conference participants)
In this session, we connect learning from discomfort with peer mediation. The goal is to discuss and co-design the basic parameters of the THUAS Relational Peer Mediation Toolkit. How can relational peer mediation support discomfort as learning? What do peer mediation and the pedagogy of discomfort have in common? How do educational and dispute resolution practices sustain relationality and repair? At the end of the session, we will open the space to pause, reflect, and listen. What resonated? What questions remain?
Day 2 – Engaging the Wider Knowledge Community
Theme: From Conflict to Connection: Reimagining Higher Education through Affective Learning and Peer Mediation
Day 2 expands the conversation beyond THUAS, inviting external scholars, educators, policymakers, and practitioners to explore how affective learning and peer mediation can serve as transformative practices within and across institutions. In a time when higher education is called to respond to deep social, emotional, and political tensions, this day explores how discomfort, conflict, and relational complexity can be harnessed—not suppressed—as opportunities for relational learning and institutional change. We ask: What does it take to embed emotionally intelligent practices into the fabric of policy, curriculum, and campus culture? And how might peer mediation serve as a bridge between individual conflict competency and collective transformation? Through shared inquiry and strategy-building, participants will co-develop ways to move from fragmentation toward connection—across roles, disciplines, and sectors.
Day 2 invites dialogue across institutions and disciplines. It is an invitation to reflect on the tensions and potentialities of embedding affective learning practices in relational peer mediation to feed them back into the heart of higher education.
Audience: Internal and external scholars, educators, policymakers, practitioners
Location: Innovation Playground, THUAS
Morning
09:00 – 09:30 | Arrival & Coffee
Meet colleagues across fields and institutions in a space of curiosity and care.
09:30 – 10:15 | Welcome & Project Update – “Learning Through Discomfort” & “What is Relational Peer Mediation”
Barbara Warwas & Naomi van Stapele present insights and lessons from Phases 1–2 of the Comenius Leadership project.
10:15 – 11:30 | The Restorative Power of Mediation
Discomfort and peer mediation through a Restorative Justice lens by Dr Annemieke Wolthuis, Restorative Justice Nederland and Avans Hogeschool (Centre of Expertise Veiligheid en Veerkracht)
11:30 – 11:45 | Break
11:45 – 13:00 | Panel – “Conflict Competency in Higher Education”
This panel explores how institutions can foster competencies for navigating conflict and affective tensions in ethical, transformative ways.
• Helen Winter (Pepperdine Law School)
• Designing student peer mediation into the university dispute system: a pilot project at Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna, Angela Felicetti (University of Bologna)
• How to build restorative universities, Nieke Elbers (VU and NSCR)
Moderator: Naomi van Stapele
Afternoon
13:00 – 14:00 | Networking Lunch (with Practice Spotlights)
Interactive stations highlight emerging practices in affective learning and peer mediation across THUAS and beyond.
14:00 – 15:30 | Critical Dialogue sessions
15:30 – 16:00 | Coffee
16:00 – 17:00 | Closing Plenary – “The University as a Just and Relational Space”: What change can you make now?
A collective reflection with Advisory Board members, international partners, and students.
How can we move forward in ways that honour vulnerability, care, and discomfort as core to learning? Group discussions, practical takeaways of tools and perspectives that empowered you.
17:00 – 18:00 | Informal Drinks, Buffet Dinner & Celebration
Celebrate the community that’s growing through this work—with music, informal dialogue, and shared joy.
Confirmed speakers:
Annemieke Wolthuis, Researcher, trainer and mediator at Restorative Justice Nederland and Avans Hogeschool (Centre of Expertise Veiligheid en Veerkracht)
Barbara Warwas, Lector Multilevel Regulation, THUAS
Naomi van Stapele, Lector Inclusive Education, THUAS
Laurence Guérin, Dean School of Education and Society, Professor Citizenship, Academica University of Applied Sciences
Angela Felicetti, Postdoctoral Research Fellow and adjunct professor, University of Bologna
Helen Winter, Assistant Professor, Pepperdine Law School
Janique Scharenborg, Social safety officer, THUAS
Tamara Takács, Centre of Expertise Global and Inclusive Learning, THUAS
Mi Jung van der Velde, Lecturer at IPPL and researcher Inclusive Education, THUAS
Nieke Elbers, Associate professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and senior researcher the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law)
Tabitha van den Berg, Mediator, Mediation Amsterdam
Antje Grebner, Lecturer at European Studies programme, THUAS
Emma Prins, Lecturer at European Studies programme, THUAS
Kornel Herold, Student-leader, THUAS