The Regeneration Lab

What changes when we learn to notice nature already growing through our cities? In this conversation, Nathalie Baumann reflects on urban ecology, biodiversity and experiential, interdisciplinary education. From pioneer plants breaking through concrete and orchids growing on rooftops to walking through cities with open eyes and ears, we explore how direct encounters can transform what students see and value. Nathalie also reflects on moving from lecturer to coach, experimenting beyond educational conventions, and why future learning must help students navigate complexity, uncertainty and change.

Key themes
Urban ecology · Biodiversity · Experiential learning · Interdisciplinarity · Transformative education

About the guest
Nathalie Baumann is a lecturer, researcher and Deputy Head of the Research Group for Green Space Development at Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW). Her work brings together urban ecology, biodiversity, green roofs and nature-based approaches with interdisciplinary and experiential education. Across her research and teaching, she explores how closer observation of the living world can help us rethink cities, reconnect ecological and social perspectives, and equip students to work with complexity and change.

Explore Nathalie’s work:
ZHAW profile - https://www.zhaw.ch/en/about-us/person/bale

What happens when students learn not only about sustainability, but by working with real places and real challenges? In this conversation, Hans Lodders and Sunamita Iris Rodrigues Borges da Costa share how QXote has become a living laboratory for regenerative, place-based learning in southern Portugal. We explore co-learning across disciplines, restoring soils and biodiversity, cultivating active hope, and creating meaningful learning beyond institutional walls. Hans and Sunamita also reflect on business, education and why prosperity, collaboration and replicability may matter more than endless growth and scalability.

Key themes
Place-based learning · Regeneration · Co-learning · Active hope · Living labs

About the guests
Dr. Sunamita Iris Rodrigues Borges da Costa is a Brazilian-born educator, researcher and co-founder and COO of QXote. With more than two decades of teaching experience and a PhD in Geography of Innovation, her work brings together environmental education, multi-stakeholder collaboration, territorial development and hands-on approaches to regeneration. She is also a trained Permaculture Designer and works with land restoration and community-led climate resilience in Portugal’s Alentejo region.

Johannes (Hans) W.E. Lodders is a consultant, programme manager, social entrepreneur and co-founder of QXote. With a background in media and innovation and more than 25 years of experience, he specialises in creating multi-stakeholder partnerships across education, business, government and civil society. At QXote, he works to connect these different worlds through experimentation, collaboration and place-based learning for sustainable regional development.

Explore their work:
QXote - www.qxote.com 
QXote Magazine - https://simplebooklet.com/qxotemagazine
QXote on Instagram - instagram.com/qxotept
QXote on LinkedIn - linkedin.com/company/qxote

What changes when we stop thinking of nature as something outside ourselves and begin connecting as nature? In this conversation, Anaïs Sägesser explores regenerative leadership, embodied and experiential learning, and the creation of safe-enough spaces for transformation. We discuss how sensory engagement and emotional experience can shift meaning perspectives, why ecocentrism matters for business education, and what higher education needs to cultivate in a time of ecological crisis. Anaïs also reflects on facilitation, systems change, and how the seeds of regenerative practice might grow into a wider forest.

Key themes
Regenerative leadership · Ecocentrism · Embodied transformative learning · More-than-human connection · Systems change

About the guest
Dr. Anaïs Sägesser is a Professor in societal transformation and transformative leadership at Bern University of Applied Sciences. Her work brings together regenerative leadership, co-creative and transformative learning, systems change, and embodied practices that reconnect us with ourselves, others, and the more-than-human world. A central thread in her work is exploring how ecocentric and relational ways of being can support wider societal transformation.

Explore Anaïs’s work and resources:
Foundational Practices of Regenerative Leadership — Insight Timer - https://insighttimer.com/meditation-courses/foundational-practices-of-regenerative-leadership
World Ethic Forum Blog - https://www.worldethicforum.com/blog/
Scaling4good Blog - https://scaling4good.com/our-thoughts/

Selected publications:
Sägesser, A., Singer-Brodowski, M., Förster, R. & Walkes, S. (forthcoming). Restorative justice and transformative learning: Creating brave and safe enough spaces for decolonial climate action.
Förster, R. & Sägesser, A. (in press). Re-sensing the urban: Transformative pathways to regenerative human-nature relationship through diverse ways of knowing. In Urban Human-Nature Partnerships – From the Anthropocene to the Ecocene. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Ritter, L. & Sägesser, A. (2025). Toward an Ecocentric Leadership as Stewardship Framework: Insights from Fostering Transformative Partnerships and Collective Practice. Earth Stewardship, 2(5), e70027.
Sägesser, A. & Shamsudhin, N. (2025). Decolonial embodied transformative learning. Proceedings of Relating Systems Thinking and Design, RSD13, Article 61.
Sägesser, A. & Förster, R. (2025). Kompetenzentwicklung für Ko-Facilitator:innen: Transformationsprozesse aus dem In-Verbindung-Sein heraus begleiten. In Kompass für den Wandel. Oekom Verlag.
Förster, R. & Sägesser, A. (2025). Connecting to self and to nature. In Imagining, Designing and Teaching Regenerative Futures. Springer.
Sägesser, A. & Förster, R. (2025). Relating: Connecting As Nature—A practice towards relational, collective leadership grounded in ecocentrism. In Inner Development Goals: Stories of Collective Leadership in Action. De Gruyter.
 

What if education helped us experience ourselves as part of a relational world? In this conversation, Reineke van Tol shares how wild pedagogies, relational outdoor learning and more-than-human perspectives can move education beyond learning about nature towards learning with it. We explore emotional and experiential learning, creating safe spaces for vulnerability, the possibilities and constraints of higher education, and what it means to “become with” the world. Reineke also reflects on how small seeds of change might grow into a wider forest of more meaningful education.

Key themes
Wild pedagogies · Relational learning · More-than-human perspectives · Experiential learning · Relational becoming

About the guest
Reineke van Tol is a teacher and researcher at Wageningen University & Research whose work explores relational outdoor learning, wild pedagogies, and questions of being and becoming in a world under stress. Her research and teaching investigate how embodied, emotional and reflective encounters with the more-than-human world can help learners reconsider who they are, what they care for, and how they want to live and contribute.

Explore Reineke’s work:
Wageningen University & Research profile - https://research.wur.nl/en/persons/reineke-van-tol/
How can we learn with nature, rather than about nature? - YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLX4v6QufTw
Into the Wild Website - https://www.reineke-intothewild.com
Van Tol, R. S. & Wals, A. (2025). Wild pedagogies in practice: Inspiration for higher education. Australian Journal of Environment

What changes when education moves beyond institutional walls and into relationship with the living world? In this conversation, Robbie Nicol reflects on decades of work in outdoor, place-based and environmental education. From “trees that speak” and residential learning to different ways of knowing, activism and communities of practice, we explore how education can become more relational, embodied and responsive. Robbie also challenges higher education to reconsider its structures and priorities, and asks a fundamental question for a time of climate and nature emergency: what is the moral purpose of education now?

Key themes
Place-based learning · Relationality · Epistemological diversity · Activist education · Transforming higher education

About the guest
Dr. Robbie Nicol is a retired Professor at the University of Edinburgh whose work spans outdoor, environmental and place-based education, learning for sustainability, and diverse ways of knowing. His teaching has explored residential and experiential learning, relational encounters with the more-than-human world, and how education can move from knowledge towards meaningful action.

Explore Robbie’s work and resources:
Times Higher Education World Academic Summit 2021 Panel Discussion on Place-Based Learning - https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/placebased-learning-digital-universities
Dear Oak film by Catherine Dunn and Jack Reed - https://youtu.be/tHTuY8UBCCE 
Videoblog of Robbie working with students - https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/teaching-matters/a-video-blog/
Beames, S., Higgins, P., Nicol, R. and Smith. S.  (2023) Outdoor Learning Across the Curriculum: Theory and Guidelines for Practice. New York: Routledge/Taylor and Francis Group.
Robbie Nicol & Pete Higgins (2024) Teaching to transgress through residential education: Nurturing pedagogical innovation to tackle the climate and nature emergencies in higher education, Journal of Moral Education, DOI: 10.1080/03057240.2024.2360239

Episode description

What changes when “nature” stops being an abstract idea and becomes a relationship? In this conversation, Ash Brockwell shares how fieldwork, creative practice, Indigenous knowledge and different ways of knowing shape the Encountering Ecosystems module at the London Interdisciplinary School. We explore what it means to meet plants, animals and places as a “who” rather than an “it”, how students respond to unfamiliar ways of knowing, and why higher education needs more room for relationality, experimentation and life to grow through the cracks.

Key themes
Relational learning · More-than-human relationships · Indigenous knowledge · Creative ecological pedagogy · Decolonising higher education

About the guest
Dr. Ash Brockwell is Associate Professor at the London Interdisciplinary School (LIS), where Ash leads Encountering Ecosystems and is helping develop the Education Futures master’s programme. Ash’s work brings together environmental education, interdisciplinary research and artistic practice, informed by earlier work with Maasai communities in Tanzania and studies in environmental anthropology and biochemistry.

Yolan uses the metaphor of a mountain climbing expedition to describe teaching: students must learn to be responsible for themselves first, then work interdependently, and ultimately collaborate with non-humans—the circular economy, energy systems, and biodiversity itself. "It's not my mountain, it's their mountain," Yolan emphasizes, explaining why student ownership is central to learning. Drawing from cooperative education models and permaculture design principles, Yolan creates learning experiences where students work in teams, practice sociocratic decision-making, and track not just what they learn but how they view things differently. This episode explores the power of starting small, moving slow, and building resilient learning communities.

Key themes: Student ownership, permaculture in education, cooperative models, working with non-humans, evolutionary change

"We are not mechanics, we are more like gardeners or stewards who plant seeds," Lucia tells us, describing her teaching philosophy organized around the four seasons. From winter's inner work to autumn's harvest, she guides students through natural cycles of growth that honor both head, heart, and hands. Driven by her children and a refusal to continue "education as usual," Lucia has embraced transformative education that moves students from "doing things better" to "seeing things differently." In this conversation, she shares how she uses embodied learning, the Doughnut Economics model, and Joanna Macy's "Work That Reconnects" to help students understand that entrepreneurship can contribute to the great turning away from extractive systems toward regenerative ones.

Key themes: Seasonal learning, embodied education, head-heart-hands approach, gift economy, personal motivation

The role of business should be to do good for society and the planet," Eddy declares. "Business and being a business person is not about individual wealth and fame." Having transformed from what he calls "a regular businessman trained in a very neoliberal way" into an educator, Eddy embodies the personal transformation that many in this series describe: reaching a point where "we couldn't continue the way we were doing." But what makes Eddy's approach distinctive is what he identifies as his driving force—"the major element for me is love for people and love for nature"—and how students feel it. Teaching business ethics, he provocatively asks students whether that's an oxymoron, helping them see the tension between conventional business paradigms and regenerative futures. Eddy emphasizes getting students back to nature, learning from biologists and biomimicry, discovering how energy can flow in a room, and understanding that sustainability - doing less harm - isn't enough. "We need a thriving society and flourishing society," he insists. From debating utopian versus dystopian futures to seeing rising inequality in cities as a call to action, Eddy demonstrates how personal values can fundamentally reshape what and how we teach.

Key themes: Love as pedagogy, business for good, personal transformation, nature connection, beyond sustainability to thriving, intergenerational justice

For Kristin, regeneration isn't just an add-on to entrepreneurship education—it's an invitation to fundamentally rethink what entrepreneurship even is. "I hope entrepreneurship education is opening up to rethink what entrepreneurship is, and it doesn't solely mean founding a start-up or exploiting a business opportunity," she explains. With a strong social-ecological justice awareness, Kristin sees entrepreneurship as potentially just the means to the end of achieving regeneration. Her teaching draws from design thinking, but adapted - focusing not just on users but on broader social-ecological systems. She emphasizes non-human actors, teaches basics from biology and ecology, and equips her students with empathy for all beings on the planet. Kristin creates spaces where transparency matters, where students address her informally, and where she actively reassures them that insecurity and mistakes are part of the process   - especially important given the mental health crisis at universities. From learning about holocracy to visiting nature for teaching, Kristin demonstrates that regeneration brings up the same tensions as sustainability, but more elevated.

Key themes: Redefining entrepreneurship, social-ecological justice, non-human actors, design thinking adaptation, transparency and vulnerability, mental health awareness