UK’s No 1 University hosts UKZN Academic

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Edge Hill University, voted UK’s number 1 university in 2014 by the Times Higher Education Awards, hosted Professor Kriben Pillay for a week under the auspices of the Centre for Learning and Teaching and the University Dean of Teaching and Learning, Professor Mark Schofield. 

The week started with a formal open round table that was arranged specifically on the occasion of Professor Pillay’s visit. The theme was ‘From Division to Life in Common: a round table on learning to live in difference’ and was chaired by Professor Victor Merriman, Director of the Performance and Civic Futures Research Group. 

Thereafter there were a number of dialogues, especially with Professor David Peimer, head of the Performing Arts, around Professor Pillay’s work in nonduality and its implications for teaching and learning in the performing arts. Professor Peimer was also interested in how the research linked to business education as his department was approached by the Edge Hill Business School to look at teaching and learning collaborations. To this end Professor Peimer and Professor Pillay have set up tentative research collaborations. 

Professor Peimer was also enthusiastic about Professor Pillay’s short story Imagining John Lennon, and said, ‘it’s wonderful and I think one of the major theatres here in the UK could well be interested given the quality of the piece and the Lennon connection’. 

The week culminated in the Centre for Learning and Teaching Conference where Professor Pillay presented a workshop: ‘How do we communicate non-separation and what is its value for higher education?’ The workshop was accompanied by a formal paper that was distribured to all conference participants and is entitled: ‘Learning and the Illusion of Solid and Separate Things: Troubsleome Knowledge and the Curriculum’, which challenges scientific materialism and the world-view of separateness, exploitation and conflict that it engenders. 

Edge Hill University is situated just oustside the medieval town of Ormskirk and is 20 kms from Liverpool.

 

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