EduCom: Educommunicating Social Sustainability.


Educommunication, combining education and communication, emerged in Latin America in the 1970s as a movement proposing an alternative understanding of communication and education as a renewed paradigm for reconfiguring power asymmetries, access to communication, and quality education especially in marginal communities. Based on the horizontality of the education/communication process from a participatory and creative vision that allows the existence of diversity in educational, community and cultural spaces in a democratic way.

The overall purpose of EduCom is to implement the concept of educcomunication as a process permeating various action competences able to potentialize the achievement of social justice and consequent social sustainability. Educommunication, associated with the notion of action competence, becomes a means to operationalize social justice, contributing to the development goal of social sustainability. The specific goals of the research in the profile area are the following:

  • Develop theoretical frameworks linking educommunication, action competence, social justice, and social sustainability
  • Develop interdisciplinary curricula and research methodologies to potentialize social sustainability with action competence and social justice as stepstones
  • Apply the developed curricula and research methodologies in collaboration with external partners such as schools, museums, and nonprofit organizations
  • Propose policy formulations and best practice standards departing from the research findings.

The EduCom research profile is led by Professor Renira Gambarato and Professor Ole Henrik Hansen.