What does it mean to design for a life well-lived? As students and teachers in higher education continue to navigate the entanglements of digital technologies, ecological crisis, and deep social inequity, this question has never been more urgent or more difficult to answer. The dominant frameworks of learning design have long been shaped by economic imperatives: optimising outcomes, maximising efficiency, preparing graduates for the labour market. Yet something essential is missing. If learning design is the practice of intentionally creating conditions for learning (Carvalho and Yeoman 2023), we must ask: conditions for what kind of learning, and in service of what kind of life?

Postdigital learning design oriented toward human flourishing offers a lens through which to approach these questions. Postdigital scholarship foregrounds the deep entanglement of technological, biological, social, and informational systems in which contemporary learning is always already embedded (Jandrić et al. 2018). The challenges reshaping education today call for open, generative, and responsive approaches to learning design for human flourishing.

A neo-Aristotelian perspective establishes the role of practical wisdom as the central integrating capacity for human flourishing (Rasmussen 1999), while in the Sufi mystical tradition, human flourishing is primarily a spiritual quest (Chittick 1984). South American indigenous perspectives on human flourishing refer to humans living in equilibrium and harmony with the community and the natural environment (Takuá 2018), and the traditional design knowledges of the First Australians centre on the interconnection of people, animals and environments (Page and Memmott 2021). Designing for human flourishing requires creating conditions for what cannot be engineered; only encountered. The purpose of this Special Issue is therefore to critically examine how postdigital learning design can be reimagined with human flourishing as one of its core principles (Wardak et al. 2026). We welcome theoretical and empirically driven papers that address, but are not limited to, the following themes:

• human flourishing as a principle of learning design
• regenerative approaches to learning design
• design justice, equity, and whose flourishing counts
• relational, communal, and ecological dimensions of learning design
• critique, resistance, and repair
• non-Western, Indigenous, and cross-cultural perspectives on human flourishing
• entanglement and socio-material relations
• community, belonging, and collective flourishing
• navigational capacity, student agency, and future-making
• postdigital learning design for human flourishing across cultural and global contexts

Important Dates

• 1 September 2026 – Deadline for abstracts (700 words)
• 15 December 2026 – Deadline for full papers
• 1 February 2027 – Deadline for reviewer feedback
• 1 April 2027 – Deadline for final submission of revised articles

Abstracts, and all other enquiries are due by 1 September 2025 by emailing Dewa Wardak

Submission Instructions

Submissions are by call for papers (open call). After acceptance of their abstract, invited authors should submit their papers through the journal’s Online Manuscript Submission System, SNAPP. Please note that paper submissions via email are not accepted.

Authors are asked to prepare their manuscripts according to the journal’s standard Submission Guidelines.

Editorial Process

• When submitting your paper in SNAPP, please select “SI: Postdigital Learning Design for Human Flourishing in Higher Education” through Collection selection in the Author’s Questionnaire
• All papers will be subject to the same rigorous peer-review and Editorial Policies as regular submissions to Postdigital Science and Education. All papers will undergo the journal’s standard review procedure (double-blind peer-review), according to the journal’s Peer Review Policy, Process and Guidance. Reviewers will be selected according to the Peer Reviewer Selection policies.
• This journal offers the option to publish Open Access. You are allowed to publish open access through Open Choice. Please explore the OA options available through your institution by referring to our list of OA Transformative Agreements.

Contact

For any questions, please contact Dewa Wardak, dewa.wardak@sydney.edu.au

References

Carvalho, L., & Yeoman, P. (2023). Postdigital Learning Design. In P. Jandrić (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Postdigital Science and Education. Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35469-4_38-1.

Chittick, W. C. (1984). The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Jandrić, P., Knox, J., Besley, T., Ryberg, T., Suoranta, J., & Hayes, S. (2018). Postdigital Science and Education. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 50(10), 893–899. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2018.1454000.

Page, A., & Memmott, P. (2021). Design: Building on Country. Port Melbourne: Thames & Hudson.

Rasmussen, D. B. (1999). Human Flourishing and the Appeal to Human Nature. Social Philosophy and Policy, 16(1), 1–43. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0265052500002235.

Takuá, C. (2018). Teko Porã, o Sistema Milenar Educativo de Equilíbrio. Rebento, 9, 5-8. https://www.periodicos.ia.unesp.br/index.php/rebento/article/view/266. Accessed 29 April 2026.

Wardak, D., Wilson, S., Carvalho, L., & Thibaut Páez, P. (2026). Postdigital Learning Design for Human Flourishing. Postdigital Science and Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-026-00650-8.

Collective writing is a form of collective intelligence that does not require consensus, and is not based on the individual (ideationally, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts). The process is an emergent one, and there are synergies. This collection relies on new technologies for making groups smarter, and there is an ethics of collective writing at stake. Even at the small scale, it is a form of self-organisation and collective adaptation at work. In this collection, we present a series of collectively written articles published in Postdigital Science and Education since its inception.

The collection is permanently open for submissions. Expected length of articles is approximately 7000 words. Longer and shorter submissions may be considered in consultation with the Collection Editor. Individual authors and author collectives are encouraged to discuss their ideas with the Collection Editor as early as possible in the making of their articles.