International exchange
This is a collaborating conglomerate consisting of universities in different European countries carrying out specific emphases within the approach of Cultural Psychology established by Jaan Valsiner. We started off with eight different countries all over Europe to found our Hub for Cultural Psychology, while being assembled at the 12th International Conference on the Dialogical Self in 2024 warmly hosted by Katrin Kullasepp in Tallinn, our intellectual place of birth. Still, we are always looking to grow and strengthen our network, tied together by diverse opinion and approach to serve our main objective of an holistic and profound way of practicing psychology sustainably for each individual in its respective cultural space of existence and negotiation. Every judgement is a lack of perspective, but we – as fragile psyches in a hypercomplex world – desperatly need to judge to be able to interact with all the different phenomena surrounding and approaching us at all times. Thus, the consistent change and exchange of perspective finds itself at the center of an epistemological security that is axiomatically rooted and therefore provides boundaries of knowledge and practice, which are flexibly and permeably driven by curiosity. Share your perspective with us to support the cause of challenging dogmatic worldviews led by fear and atrocity in order to embrace fruitful cultural multiplicity on a global scale.
Courageous research
Welcome to our Hub!
Psychology is hopelessly stuck in its focus on methods and has overlooked their wider context - methodology. Separating methods from theories and phenomena has led to the creation of 'empirical science' that is hyper-productive formally and dead intellectually. It is not the questions of which kinds of methods are used (quantitative or qualitative, standardized or creative). Rather, it is the question of what kind of knowledge the insertion of one or another method into the methodology cycle allows us to produce. Answers to that question are the privilege of the meta-codes - basic assumptions about the whole effort of research. In a basic distinction, non-developmental meta-codes (which characterize most of psychology) make no knowledge about developmental phenomena possible. The empirical research efforts are thus comparable to the blind guiding the blind.
This is why we are aiming for bridging methodology and knowledge synergistcally by establishing progressive research clusters that will be co-constructed together with our students and their open minds to challenge our expert minds. By exploiting this intellectual tension, we want to strengthen our field of research to be truly able to call it psychology once again, eventually.
Looking forward to elaborating approaches with you in one of these clusters soon...
Integrative approach
Analogically referring to its biological sister, semiosis helps us to selectively filter phenomenological information through epistemologically calibrated membranes to create idiographic meaning and therefore psychological reality within the cultural space on an individual and collective basis, reciprocally – as a pathetic try to tame the omnipresent hypercomplexity of the natural real seeminlgy trying to devour us without tiring. Fostering a substantial equilibrium between the outer and the inner complexity without overcompensating, a challenge only to be faced with synergistic forces. Forces that need to be catalyzed by bringing together scientific transdisciplinarity and human diversity. We carry out our vision of Cultural Psychology through well adjusted activities within our hub and collaborations within our network.
