2026 Speaker Nisha Gupta, PhD
Presentation: Blueprints for a New Society in Which It Will be Easier to Love: A Pedagogy of Hope
Rollo May called on human beings to embrace our “courage to create” in times of sociopolitical peril—to actively shape the world to become more beautiful and just in the precious image of our love. This presentation introduces a trauma-informed teaching intervention inspired by liberation psychology, for which I transformed my Social Psychology course into a creative thinktank to guide 17 college students of diverse cultural and political worldviews to build the blueprints for a new society “in which it will be easier to love.” Using liberatory educator Paulo Freire’s method of dialoguing for critical consciousness, I will describe the process and product of turning my classroom into a beloved community of visionary social architects who reimagined a better world together, as a pedagogy of hope.
You can visit the Blue Prints for a New Society webpage here.


