Dr. Francesca Lorenzi

Dr. Francesca Lorenzi is a lecturer and researcher in the School of Policy and Practice at Dublin City University, lecturing across undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in Intercultural Education, Educational Ethics, Philosophy of Education, and Lifelong learning. She holds a PhD from Maynooth University focusing on the democratisation of educational practices and the role of dialogue in assessment.

Dr. Lorenzi’s research centres on dialogic and democratic approaches to assessment, creativity, ethics, and intergenerational learning for sustainability. Her research portfolio includes the evaluation of creative initiatives like Fighting Words, alongside extensive publications on distance education and feedforward assessment frameworks. Dr. Lorenzi is an active member of the DCU Centre for Possibility Studies, the Further Education and Training Research Centre (FETRC), and RCE Dublin (Regional Centre of Expertise in Education for Sustainable Development).

Her research interests include but are not limited to:

1. Dialogic, Democratic, and Sustainable Assessment

• Feedforward & Formative Pedagogy: Reconceptualizing assessment from a static measurement tool into a dynamic, relational process. Emphasizing "feedforward" mechanisms that foster continuous reflection, deep learning, and transferable professional competence.
• Democratisation of Educational Practices: Countering performative and outcome-driven educational cultures by involving learners directly in criteria-setting, peer evaluation, and value-driven assessment frameworks.
• Sustainable Assessment: Designing practices that build lifelong self-assessment capacity, equipping learners to adapt thoughtfully to future personal, professional, and societal challenges.

2. Intergenerational Learning and futurition

• Temporality and Care in Sustainability: Critiquing growth-driven, linear innovation models that accelerate transience and depletion.
• Older Adults as Custodians of Meaning: Revaluing the role of older generations in educational discourses, positioning them as vital custodians of cultural memory, wisdom, and alternative future-making rather than passive recipients of care.
• Intergenerational Dialogue: Facilitating exchanges across age cohorts to build empathy, solidarity, and shared responsibility in addressing climate anxiety and global crises.

3. Creativity, Liminality, and Social Inclusion

• Liminal Learning Spaces: Investigating creative "spaces of encounter" between educators and learners that allow for risk-taking, identity formation, and the disruption of rigid institutional hierarchies.
• Creative Expression & Empowerment: Evaluating arts-based and community-led initiatives—such as Fighting Words—to demonstrate how creative writing and narrative agency empower young people, particularly those from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds.
• Moral Imagination: Exploring how creative mediums (literature, film, storytelling) awaken ethical sensitivity and foster critical, empathetic thinking in students.

4. Educational Ethics, Transdisciplinarity & Sustainability

• Anthropocene & Planetary Citizenship: Applying philosophical lenses to guide higher education through complex contemporary crises, positioning Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) as a deeply ethical and civic endeavour.
• Transdisciplinary Dialogue: Championing dialogic approaches that bridge academic disciplines, breaking down siloes between the humanities, sciences, and societal practice to navigate messy, real-world challenges.
• Resisting Quantification: Challenging the marketisation and over-quantification of education, advocating instead for the preservation of "unquantifiable" educational values—such as trust, wonder, and relational ethics.