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The Role of Youth-Led Innovations in Driving Social Change: A Case Study of 10 Minutes School in Bangladesh
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Beyond the Character Sheet: Tabletop Role Playing Games as Spaces for Social Identity Formation and Community Building
No full textBefore we set off on our amazing journey, we suggest you create a short map that will serve as your guide throughout our project.Imagine a tavern lit by fire and located on the edge of a forgotten forest. Around a wooden table sit warriors, mages, rogues — and perhaps a timid bard with a dusty lute. But take a closer look: these are not elves and dwarves, but ordinary people — students, nurses, programmers, and dreamers — whose everyday worries disappear in an instant, as soon as the dice roll begins. In our project, we will mention 2 main terms that we limited to abbreviations, namely: D&D and RPGs.To begin, we suggest you familiarize yourself with what an RPGs is?Role Playing games (RPGs) are a form of shared storytelling in which players take on the roles of fictional characters and make decisions that shape the overall narrative. These decisions affect how the story unfolds. Unlike video games, RPGs — especially tabletop ones — rely on imagination, dialogue, and interaction rather than graphics or pre-conceived scenarios. Among these games, one name stands out like a legendary sword: Dungeons & Dragons, or as we will henceforth call it: D&D. This is the pioneer of tabletop RPGs. It offers a set of rules and a rich fantasy structure. Hopefully you can imagine dragons, ancient ruins, elven cities — but the true magic is not in the setting, but in what the players do with it. Together, players can build worlds, conquer peaks, undertake epic quests, and much more. Very often, players face moral dilemmas, all the while laughing, arguing, and, most importantly, revealing parts of themselves that they might not otherwise show.So if you're new here, welcome. Sit back, because your incredible journey is about to begin… Where does the game end and self-knowledge begin? The question is not as rhetorical as it may seem at first glance. In the space of tabletop Role Playing games (RPGs), where every decision has consequences, and every character is a reflection of someone's inner truth, and where the boundaries between fiction and reality are erased. Our project is dedicated to studying the phenomenon of self-expression through participation in Role Playing games, and especially in the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) system, and how these games become an entry point into the processes of identity formation, a sense of belonging, and strengthening interpersonal connections. At first glance, D&D may seem like just a game — an entertainment model with its own rules, dice, and magical worlds. However, behind this typical façade, there is a whole ecosystem of meanings: languages, rituals, culture, and, most importantly, joint creativity. Here, they do not just roll dice — they create stories. And each character that the player brings to life becomes a guide into his own inner world... Our team approached the study through the lens of autoethnography — participant and reflexive observation, in which we, as researchers, become part of what we study. This approach allowed us not only to analyze the game from the outside, but to feel its impact from the inside: on the emotional, cognitive and social levels. We also conducted interviews with Role Playing community members in parallel to supplement personal experience with the perspective of those who have, as they say, lived and breathed this culture for a long time. The key theoretical pillars of our project were: Social Identity Theory, Narrative Theory of Personality, concepts of community, play and participation. All of these theories helped to reveal how fictional roles help people better understand their real selves, learn to interact in a group, feel accepted and heard. The shared storytelling inherent in D&D opens up a space for trial and error, where a participant can be bold, vulnerable, eccentric or virtuous - without the risk of being judged. We hope that our subsequent observations will show that tabletop Role Playing games can be more than just entertainment and leisure activities, but also primarily serve as a psychological space, namely: a place where participants safely experience emotions, explore personal boundaries, build trust and feel part of a group. Especially in the context of intercultural experiences or social isolation, such games can be an excellent tool for creating sustainable and meaningful social connections. So our team is happy to invite you, as readers, to look at D&D not just as a geek culture artifact or children's entertainment, but as a socio-psychological practice that deserves attention. Here, in the conventional magic and fantasy, real processes are hidden — the construction of identity, the formation of community and personal transformation. And perhaps it is the game that can reveal to a person such sides of oneself that science cannot always measure, but which it is obliged to try to understand…<br/
Voluntary Work in Sct. Hans Have
No full textIf you have an interest in exploring the psychological motivation and social dynamics behind voluntarywork in a social economic enterprise, then this project is for you.This project explores this theme through a case study of Sct. Hans Have (SHH), a social economicenterprise garden located by the old psychiatric hospital Sct. Hans in Roskilde, Denmark.By using a practice research approach, qualitative data were collected through participant observation, aninformal interview, and documents related to SHH’s practice. The study focuses on the role of “gardenhosts” – volunteers who contribute to SHH’s inclusive work community, which combines nature, mentalhealth recovery, and social engagement.Drawing on Antonovsky’s Sense of Coherence theory, Self-Determination Theory by Deci and Ryan, andBourdieu’s sociological concepts, the analysis investigates how volunteers find meaning, autonomy, andcommunity in their roles.The findings reveal a complexity within the influence of social background, and the ways in whichinclusion and exclusion are negotiated in practice. The study concludes that SHH offers a valuableframework for mental well-being and community through voluntary engagement, while also highlightingtensions between ideals of equality and actual social dynamics
Professional Athletes & Psychological Challenges
No full textThere has been an increasing focus on mental health in today's world, yet strong taboos around psychological challenges still persist in the world of professional sports. This project explores how professional athletes experience and manages mental obstacles within a performance-oriented culture, and what role mental training plays in this context.The empirical foundation is based on semi-structured interviews with mental coach Henrik Hjarsbæk and a professional athlete, who both offer personal experiences and professional insights into the handling of mental health in elite sports. To analyze the empirical material, we apply theories from Aaron Beck and Viktor Frankl, representing cognitive and existential psychology respectively, supplemented with sports psychology perspectives from Hjarsbæk’s practice. We examine how these psychological theories are reflected in the themes throughout the interviews, and how they help explain the mechanisms and strategies used in dealing with psychological challenges.Our analysis shows that professional sports carry specific psychological risks, where performance and identity are closely intertwined. Mental training appears as a tool to foster psychological flexibility and meaning under pressure. We discuss the overlap within our theoretical foundations in relation to the management of mental health in sport, while also incorporating insights on motivation from Helle Hein’s theoretical work and finally consider the role mental coaches can play in supporting athletes through psychological challenges.Our findings suggest that both cognitive and existential psychology contribute to understanding how athletes experience and cope with psychological challenges. However, there is also a clear need for approaches in the sports world that account for each athlete’s individual motivation and existential needs, as well as psychological prerequisites. <br/
Reality inside out
No full textKonspirationsteorier som meningsdannende konstruktioner, forstået med anker i et kulturpsykologisk perspekti
Precarisation in the Pedagogical Sector and Its Influence on Young Workers' Subjectivation Processes
No full textThis project examines how young pedagogues, working at a school, are experiencing and navigating through insecure employment contracts in a pedagogical field influenced by precarious processes. The methodology of the project is a qualitative combination including a focus group interview, centering four young pedagogues, and two semi-structured interviews - the first one with the administrative managers of the school, and the second one with one of the pedagogues from the focus group. The project is further supported by qualitative articles and research related to the topic, as well as a theoretical framework, primarily emanating from the British sociologist, Nikolas Rose. The project shows how a pedagogical field influenced by precarious conditions can create certain processes of subjectivations, where internal feelings of insecurities and accountabilities can arise, due to a wish to perform in order to get a secure contract. The project argues that these dynamics influence the personal development of the employees interviewed, as well as their ability to navigate through a field which can be psychologically challenging. The project contributes to an insight, where it is stated that precarious processes sparks an acceptance by the interviewed employees - an acceptance of unwritten rules and psychologically challenging premises in the pedagogical field, where the underlying structures and organisational terms are not questioned. The aim of this project is not to generalize, but rather to examine the specific processes of subjectivations of the pedagogical employees that have been brought to our attention during our interviews. It is therefore a project that shows a description of the struggles that might occur as the result of precarious processes in the pedagogical field.<br/