How can engineering education be a path to recruiting a more socially diverse student population? Building on data from surveys of bachelor engineering students at a Norwegian technical university over 3 years, this study examines their motivations for studying engineering, separated by parent's educational background to see if we can discern differences in the motivation for engineering students with parents without higher education, that can point to ways of recruiting a more socially diverse student population. The data suggests that references to previous vocational education and/or work in industry are highly overrepresented in working-class students. This suggests that the (not so straightforward) path from vocational education to higher education is particularly important for this student group. Updated with minor typographical corrections: June 30, 2025.
STEM education research has repeatedly demonstrated how the STEM field is gendered masculine. But what does this mean? Is there anything about STEM subjects as such, that warrants labelling them masculine? This paper explores these questions through a meta-narrative, theoretical-critical review of previous review studies. The aim is to investigate how STEM subjects have been conceptualized as gendered in STEM education research, and what this means for feminist STEM educators who want to pluralize STEM education. Three ways of conceptualizing STEM subjects as gendered are identified: 1) The non-substantial association thesis; 2) The masculine epistemology of STEM; 3) STEM as difficult, asocial, and unhelpful. An over-arching finding is that most studies do not explore how STEM subjects emerge as gendered in the educational settings explored. Instead, gender is “imputed” into the analysis in ways that are not always productive for educators who want to pluralize STEM education through educational measures. Updated with minor typographical corrections: June 30, 2025.
The murder of George Floyd catalyzed global awareness of systemic racism and reignited calls for diversity and inclusivity, including in engineering. It highlighted how the legacies of slavery and colonialism persist through neoliberalism and racial capitalism. However, this momentum has waned, with backlash threatening the rollback of critical equity efforts. Superficial inclusivity initiatives are insufficient, but abandoning them entirely risks perpetuating historical and ongoing harms. Current approaches to fostering awareness of colonial impacts, particularly in engineering, inadequately prepare students to meaningfully engage with systemic inequities. We present First Thrive, Then Lead, a transformative framework for engineering education emphasizing mental health and well-being—for educators and students—as foundational to decolonization. This approach addresses how colonial legacies manifest in engineering and critiques dominant paradigms, such as socio-technical dualism, meritocracy, and depoliticization, which hinder meaningful engagement with systemic inequities. Through classroom and extracurricular applications, we demonstrate the potential of First Thrive, Then Lead to foster leadership rooted in empathy, systemic awareness, and transformational change. We call on the engineering community to confront its complicity in structural inequities and adopt practices that prioritize collective healing and justice, essential for the future of engineering education. Updated with minor typographical corrections: June 30, 2025.
This special issue of the International Journal of Engineering, Social Justice, and Peace (IJESJP) represents a wide array of work that was presented, discussed and created during the 2024 Engineering, Social Justice and Peace (ESJP) conference, held at Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg Sweden, and online. In this editorial we say something about the collaborative and creative process behind the conference, the process of interactive peer reviewing employed, and the contributions included in this special issue. Updated with minor typographical corrections: June 30, 2025.
This paper explores how Africanfuturism, specifically Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti series, offers a transformative framework for reimagining engineering education to promote inclusivity, belonging, and diverse epistemologies. Grounded in Marcus Garvey’s call to honor cultural histories, we critique the colonial legacies of engineering, which favor Western knowledge systems while sidelining non-Western contributions. Drawing from bell hooks’ concept of transformative education, we argue that Africanfuturism challenges exclusionary practices by incorporating ancestral knowledge, cultural traditions, and liberatory visions into STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine) fields. Through thematic analyses of race and prejudice, innovation rooted in tradition, and cultural identity, Binti illustrates how Black epistemologies—grounded in community, spirituality, and historical consciousness—can reshape engineering education. We emphasize the potential of Africanfuturist narratives to decenter whiteness, confront systemic racism, and foster educational environments where marginalized students can thrive. By centering Black radical imagination, this paper advocates for an interdisciplinary, justice-oriented approach that integrates storytelling, cultural identity, and diverse ways of knowing to cultivate engineers committed to equity, empathy, and social transformation. Updated with minor typographical corrections: June 30, 2025.
My name is Sam Hoang, and I am an Assistant Professor at Seattle University. ESJP 2024 was my first experience with a conference of this particular format. When learning about this conference from my colleague, Yen, I was curious about the invitation to submit artifacts that do not take the form of a traditional research paper. We were interested in writing a paper reflecting on our journeys to becoming faculty as women of color. Citing external sources when we were writing about our experiences did not make sense since our experiences are unique and not something that should require citation. Citations are something that I would expect to include in submissions to any other conference venue so the explicit invitation to submit nontraditional artifacts was very freeing in this aspect and made it a lot easier to think that our idea for a paper reflecting on our journey through academia would be an appropriate paper format and topic for the conference. It really freed up me and my coauthors to write without feeling like we were required to cite other sources to corroborate our experiences. With regards to the review process, we did not actually get many reviews in person since the discussion table included other authors that all reviewed each other. Because there were three papers to discuss in a short period of time, we did not have a chance to discuss our paper at all. Additionally, our reviewer was also one of the organizers and was busy with other tasks to keep the conference running during the discussion period. Therefore, our reviews were shared with us mainly via email. While I like the idea of doing a peer review session during the conference, for our paper specifically, we did not have a great experience with regards to the review session held during the conference. One major advantage to this reviewing structure is that we got to know our reviewer before seeing their review and vice versa. It made the review process feel warmer than I experienced with other conference and journal submissions. Getting to know our reviewer prior to receiving their review helped our reviewer understand our reasonings behind the chosen format of our submission. Additionally, presenting our paper before receiving our reviews also created an opportunity to present out work to the reviewer making it a much richer experience by adding onto what is written in the manuscript. If this format is pursued in the future, it would be helpful if there was more time to discuss the papers during the conference. Depending on the number of submissions, it would be helpful to have more presentation sessions and only have 1-2 papers to discuss in each discussion period so that there is more time for reviewers and authors to talk about their papers. It would also be helpful if there were other times or spaces designated in the schedule to give authors and reviewers more time to chat about their papers outside of the presentation and discussion session. With regards to the conference itself, I really enjoyed having various art materials available at the venue. Arts are not usually treated as relevant to engineering so it was awesome to see the arts be a major component of this conference. While I did not know what to do with the art materials at first, I was inspired by seeing other people using the materials. Once I started using the materials, I found it helpful for managing my fidgeting. I generally have a hard time sitting still so interacting with the art materials was a great way for me to channel my excess energy while still listening to the presented. (communication by email on 2025-04-22)
The artwork presents a striking contrast. On one hand, it portrays seemingly pure, vivid turquoise waters reminiscent of a serene paradise. On the other hand, these waters are the toxic evaporation ponds for lithium extraction within the "Lithium Triangle” ("Triángulo del Litio"), a vast area on the borders of Chile, Bolivia, and Argentina. This stark contrast is a potent reminder that pursuing a future reliant on lithium-ion batteries comes at a significant cost to Indigenous Peoples, the environment, and biodiversity. Lithium extraction, which uses vast quantities of water, contributes to the decline in saline lake levels and the increase in salinity. Indigenous Peoples face a harsh reality: due to a lack of water for agriculture, they are forced to seek an alternative to small-scale farming. The empty water bottles, a symbol of the scarcity of available water, remind them of this dire situation. Bottled water, often from multi-nationals, is ironically labelled with life-affirming indications of purity. The artwork compels us to examine the conflict and injustice of resource exploitation in the Global South to pursue a more sustainable future. Oil on canvas. Actual size: 30.5 x 40.6 cm. The artist does not use animal products or rare minerals to produce artwork. Updated with minor typographical corrections: June 30, 2025.
What stories can we tell to think higher engineering education futures with? How can we imagine what practices are possible? How can we transgress what hasn’t served us, other critters, and the planet? These are questions that inspired us to develop a workshop in which we used collage-making to visualize narratives on current states of engineering education, as well as to transgress them to envision other possible futures. Grounded in Holland et al.’s (1998) theory of Figured Worlds and Lönngren and Berge’s concept of Emotional Positioning, the workshop explored figured emotional worlds operating in engineering classrooms and imagined possible futures. Here, we 1) map out the progression of the activity, 2) share examples of collages and their stories, and 3) provide multiple dimensions of reflection, discussing the uses of collages and how they prompted us to imagine, tell, and transgress stories about current and possible futures of higher engineering education. Updated with minor typographical corrections: June 30, 2025.
Las continuas crisis en Argentina han fomentado el desarrollo de un esquema de trabajo informal y heterogéneo, con una amplia participación de mujeres que viven en barrios segregados socioeconómicamente. Si bien existen una serie de conocimientos y capacidades ya instalados; aún persiste la necesidad de trabajar en pos de desarrollos específicos, contextualizados y co-construidos que permitan mejorar las actividades productivas y generar condiciones de vida dignas. El presente artículo propone reflexionar sobre: ¿Cómo construir una tecnología que responda a necesidades e intereses territorializados? ¿Quién debería y quién puede crearla? ¿Cuál es el papel de los profesionales universitarios en este escenario? ¿Cómo resignificar el conocimiento académico y el quehacer profesional para impulsar la co-construcción del conocimiento con otros actores sociales en pos de desarrollos que busquen la transformación social?. Se tomó como base epistémica para el análisis, dos proyectos realizados entre mujeres trabajadoras de huertas comunitarias y profesionales, docentes y estudiantes universitarios (química, biología y artes) e instituciones y reparticiones estatales. El trabajo desde una perspectiva epistémica participativa y constructivista, permitió la co-construcción de conocimiento para el desarrollo de una tecnología social: técnicas de aprovechamiento de plantas aromáticas e instrumentos de gestión. La articulación entre múltiples actores sociales y la decisión de los profesionales universitarios de ejercer su profesión desde lógicas más democráticas, resultaron aspectos claves para resignificar el habitar de la huerta y expandir la territorialidad propia de los actores intervinientes. Actualizado con correcciones tipográficas menores: 30 de junio de 2025.
Another university is possible! An exclamation point. A claim. A theme. The title of the 2024 ESJP conference. Do it differently! A call to reimagine conference engagements and practices. During the conference, I listened to colleagues presenting their work. Some presentations. But also workshops. An attempt to do academia differently. Another academia. Some of it different. More play. Less performance. More activity. Less lecturing. More colorful wax pastels and playdough. Less black words on white paper and screens. Some of it giving hope. Inspiring. Some of it challenging academic rules. Some of it playing academic tunes. Using academia’s colors. Performing academic performances. Puzzling. Why is it so hard to do it differently? Even if the invitation is to do it differently. Think. Feel. Believe. Another university possible? Another engineering possible? Maybe. But why hasn’t this been easier? Possible, so far? bell hooks writes, “Dominator culture has tried to keep us all afraid, to make us choose safety instead of risk, sameness instead of diversity. Moving through that fear, finding out what connects us, revelling in our differences; this is the process that brings us closer, that gives us a world of shared values, of meaningful community” (2003, p.197). How can we build these meaningful communities? And can we? This piece unpacks some thoughts on community in conversation. A collective movement from a caricature to regeneration. Updated with minor typographical corrections: June 30, 2025.
The artwork depicts the vivid colours of the lithium brine extraction ponds and the vulnerability of the ecosystems within northern Chile. Lithium extraction uses vast quantities of brine pumped from aquifers, reducing the water available to surrounding ecosystems. Mineral exploitation contributes to the depletion of the water resources of the hypersaline lagoons of the Salar de Atacama, endangering these rare ecosystems – and reducing the Artemia (brine shrimp) population, a food source for the flamingos. Two of most threatened species are the Andean and the James’ flamingos; both are endemic to the region. While the urgency of addressing climate change is undeniable, it is crucial to recognise that lithium extraction has an environmental cost in transitioning to a “greener” future. The artwork underscores the immediate need to find more sustainable ways to obtain lithium and consider alternative methods to brine evaporation to prevent further biodiversity loss. It also brings to the forefront the vital issues of Indigenous environmental justice and the concept of “other-than-human” challenging our traditional understanding of humanity's role in nature. Oil on canvas. Actual size: 28 x 36 cm. The artist does not use animal products or rare minerals to produce artwork. Updated with minor typographical corrections: June 30, 2025.
STEM education research has repeatedly demonstrated how the STEM field is gendered masculine. But what does this mean? Is there anything about STEM subjects as such, that warrants labelling them masculine? This paper explores these questions through a meta-narrative, theoretical-critical review of previous review studies. The aim is to investigate how STEM subjects have been conceptualized as gendered in STEM education research, and what this means for feminist STEM educators who want to pluralize STEM education. Three ways of conceptualizing STEM subjects as gendered are identified: 1) The non-substantial association thesis; 2) The masculine epistemology of STEM; 3) STEM as difficult, asocial, and unhelpful. An over-arching finding is that most studies do not explore how STEM subjects emerge as gendered in the educational settings explored. Instead, gender is imported into the analysis in ways that are not always productive for educators who want to pluralize STEM education through educational measures.
We are three female faculty of color[1] who crossed paths while pursuing our academic careers. In this work, we share our personal stories of how our identities evolved into who we are today as female faculty members in mechanical engineering and how our identities might continue to impact our paths later in our careers. The three of us have very different identities, but the common point is that we “chose” our careers in academia. Through this work, we discussed what led to our “choice” to become faculty, connected with each other about the difficulties we faced, and highlighted “missed opportunities” in each of our paths. We want to emphasize that there is more than one pathway to a career in academia. We also want to emphasize the importance of self-reflection and find ways to support other women who may be feeling isolated and excluded in engineering. We see this conference as a great venue to share and gain such support from others. [1] The authors are located in the United States of America, where “people of color” generally refer to all non-White populations. Updated with minor typographical corrections: June 30, 2025.
What stories can we tell to help us rethink engineering education futures? How can we imagine what practices are possible? How can we transgress what hasn't served us, other critters, and the planet? These are questions that inspired us to develop a workshop in which we used collage-making to visualize narratives on current states and possible futures of engineering education. Grounded in Holland et al.'s (1998) theory of figured worlds and L & ouml;nngren and Berge's (2024) concept of emotional positioning, the workshop explored figured emotional worlds operating in and envisioned for engineering classrooms. In this paper, we critically examine reflections of activities from during the workshop and its outcomes to ask the overarching question, how can engineers and engineering educators interact with the figured worlds of engineering to (re)imagine our work, our futures, and ourselves? To answer this question, we consider the workshop a case through which we 1) map out the context and progression of the activity, 2) share examples of collages and their stories, and 3) offer and explore multiple dimensions of critical reflection, thematically analyzing the collages and discussing their use in how they prompted us to imagine, tell, and transgress stories about current and possible futures of engineering education worlds.
This paper explores how Africanfuturism, specifically Nnedi Okorafor's Binti series, offers a transformative framework for reimagining engineering education to promote inclusivity, belonging, and diverse epistemologies. Grounded in Marcus Garvey's call to honor cultural histories, we critique the colonial legacies of engineering, which favor Western knowledge systems while sidelining non-Western contributions. Drawing from bell hooks' concept of transformative education, we argue that Africanfuturism challenges exclusionary practices by incorporating ancestral knowledge, cultural traditions, and liberatory visions into STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields. Through thematic analyses of race and prejudice, innovation rooted in tradition, and cultural identity, Binti illustrates how Black epistemologies-grounded in community, spirituality, and historical consciousness-can reshape engineering education. We emphasize the potential of Africanfuturist narratives to decenter whiteness, confront systemic racism, and foster educational environments where marginalized students can thrive. By centering Black radical imagination, this paper advocates for an interdisciplinary, justice-oriented approach that integrates storytelling, cultural identity, and diverse ways of knowing to cultivate engineers committed to equity, empathy, and social transformation.
In Colombia, engineering projects have incorporated into their design, construction and operation, the interlocution with different disciplines of engineering, such as the natural sciences, initially, and the social sciences, later. This process has affected the way in which projects relate to territories and how companies approach the most critical problems, in the midst of which they develop their operation. The determinants of this inclusion have been the great ecological and social transformations originated by the same projects in the territories, the poor management of the impacts, the organized social protest with scope of civic strikes in the regions in which the projects are built and operated. and, in the last twenty years, the exacerbation of the risks caused by the armed conflict. Some companies manage to carry out a progressive reading of the infrastructure works and their relationship with the territories, as a complex problem and take steps for the construction of interdisciplinarity within the teams in charge of the works. It is a confluence that is built from the linking of professionals from the natural and social sciences, who achieve different levels of articulation with engineering groups, dominant in infrastructure construction companies. This process allows new readings of the territory and in some cases advances to propitiate dialogues in contexts of search of recognition of the communities, of management of impacts of the works, of agreement around management measures, of compensation with compensations for the population, of respect for human rights and, even of collaborative action in the construction of peace, through the promotion and support of the Development and Peace Programs (PDP), created from the initiative of Father Francisco De Roux in Magdalena Middle in 1995. It is a question of few companies, and of a process with great uncertainties, but because of its importance it is a reference for other companies and for the PDP that are, in turn, fundamental for the construction of peace.
This article presents the evolution of the Colombian Network of Engineering and Social Development (ReCIDS in spanish) and its impact through events such as the IV Colombian Meeting of Engineering and Social Development (ECIDS in spanish), held in 2023 in the city of Pereira. This network promotes unconventional, engaged and socially conscious engineering and organizes, since 2018, meetings and colloquiums that encourage dialogue, reflection and collaboration between academics, students and communities. ReCIDS as a social construct, has allowed the socialization of initiatives and projects that integrate engineering at the service of social transformation where engineering theory and practice are integrated and this document presents emerging concepts and critical reflections that, fundamentally, show the experience of the IV ECIDS, highlighted by the participation of actors with different views, which revealed new practices for social transformation and criticism of conventional engineering practice, from papers, dialogues with international networks and the experience of social leaders and committed entrepreneurs.
