26th European Seminar on Extension & Education - ESEE |10-13.07.23|

Sustainability transitions of agriculture and the transformation of education and advisory services: convergence or divergence?

The European Seminar on Extension & Education (ESEE) is a biennial conference about agricultural advice and education. It has gathered scholars advisors and educators since 1973. Click here to learn about past conferences organised in Ireland (2021) and Italy (2019).

It aims at supporting discussion between science and practice. Hence, it is open to a diversity of contributions, both academic and practical. ESEE gathers and contrast experiences and findings from all European countries, but also between Europe and other contexts in the global North and global South. The seminar has lead to the publication of several special issues in the Journal of Agricultural Extension and Education and other academic publications.

The 2023 conference will be organised in Toulouse. It will focus on the convergences and divergences between sustainability transitions and the new patterns of advice and education.

Sustainable transition of agriculture is at the forefront of both academic and political agenda, especially in the frame of the next European Common Agricultural Policy. Education and Advisory services are expected to be major drivers of these transitions, by co-producing knowledge with farmers and farm workers, enhancing their competences and supporting their innovation processes. At the same time, advisory services and education face major transformations (digitalisation, privatisation, new governance models, etc.). The relations between these two dynamics - sustainable transition of agriculture and the transformations of advice and education are the matter of debates and controversies. The aim of this conference will be to discuss about concepts, empirical evidence and new methods to support the contribution of advice & education to the various dimensions of sustainability, including social dimensions (inequalities and labour & work conditions) and environmental ones (climate change, biodiversity, water).

MORE INFORMATIONS : https://esee2023.colloque.inrae.fr/