Postgraduate Students

Heidi Piña-Gasca considers herself to be a life apprentice guided by a ?compass rose? where empathy (N), social co-responsibility (S), humility (E), and learning (W) trace her coordinates towards horizons of awareness and knowledge. Currently, she is completing a PhD in Sociology as part of the Energy Cultures interdisciplinary research team.

With a background that comprises anthropological sciences, education and sociology of knowledge, Heidi's research experience is in four main areas:

1. Systemic and interpretative approaches to the understanding of higher-education pedagogical models; 
2. Design of value-based collaborative learning environments; 
3. Intercultural communication;
4. Social transitions. 

Heidi has a long-standing passion for philosophy of science, especially in relation to values and their role in knowledge production. In philosophy of science, she places herself in the phenomenological tradition of Edmund Husserl, with roots back to Aristotle and Kant, and particularly inspired by Martin Heidegger and Alfred Schütz. Being aware of the importance of both the social context of application and the cultural context of implication when doing research, she endeavours to keep a balanced perspective between critical rationalism and social phenomenology. With regards to sociology of knowledge and with links to education, her perspective is framed at the interface between constructivism and constructionism. The guiding principles that inspire her in the design of pedagogical frameworks date back to Jean Piaget, and have been critically developed by other thinkers such as Bärbel Inhelder and Lawrence Kohlberg.