José Víctor Orón, researcher predoctoral of the group Mind-brain Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) of the University of Navarra, has completed a four-month stay at the University of Reading thanks to a scholarship granted by the Caja Navarra Banking Foundation.

During his stay, he has worked with Kleio Akrivou, lecturer at department in Ethics at Henley Business School, University of Reading. As a result of this partnership, both have published a article and a book chapter and have launched several projects that are still open today.

What does the research consist of that you have carried out during your stay?

My stay was the result of some conferences on human development given by Kleio Akrivou two years ago at the University of Navarra. Akrivou spoke about how different psychologists understand the human development and how they consider the topic of the integrity of the person at the end of life.

At first glance, the topic did not have much relation with my thesis on Education emotional adolescents. However, we started working together on a article because, despite having different focuses of interest, we shared a common ground: we were both interested in deepening our understanding of the human development from a psychological point of view.

After several months of distance work , I proposed her to do the overseas study period with her at the University of Reading to deepen in the topic and to fulfill one of the requirements to obtain the doctorate international. She accepted and between the two of us we outlined the two objectives of my stay. On the one hand, to close the work that we had been developing together on integration in the last stages of life. At this point we realized that it was not only a problem of the last stages of mature people but that, deep down, the human development is understood in different ways. So the second goal we set out to do was to define what were the various conceptual forms of how the human development was being understood.

What activities have you developed during your stay?

The work has been an interdisciplinary research between Philosophy and psychology. We have used the philosophical contribution of Leonardo Polo to conceptualize the current psychological lines. Nowadays many differences can be appreciated between one psychologist and another, but even so, the concept of human being and the development behind both is the same.

We discovered two main lines. We have called the first one Autonomous Self (AS). It states that the core topic of the human development is autonomy, mastery, skill or self-determination, among others. In the second line, called Interprocedural Self (IPS), the human development occurs in core topic personalist: the whole person is considered as a system in which everything is related and affected and the development of all this system is what allows a person to grow.

This work, in which Akrivou contributes the psychological part and I contribute the more philosophical part, has been presented at three different times. The first one, in an interdisciplinary seminar at Henley Business School. The other two seminars were given at the department of neuroscience at the University College of London and at the School of Education of the University of Reading itself.

On each site we did the same thing: we presented the structure of work and then explained what its application or impact would be in each area: economic, in the first case; neuroscientific, in the second; and educational, in the third.

Once in Spain, what is your assessment of your stay?

The balance I make is very positive. I was fortunate that Professor Akrivou has her entire teaching from January to June, so she was free during my stay. Our dynamic of work consisted of meeting twice a week for five or six hours and the rest of the week we each worked individually.

As a result of the two objectives with which we started working, a article and a chapter of a book, respectively, emerged and have already been delivered. In the case of the chapter, we realized that we could address more things. Thus, a third project appeared: a book made from psychology and Philosophy in which the two ways of conceptualizing the human development are exposed and we bet on one of them. There is also a fourth project to try to apply all this to the emotional Education , topic main of my thesis .

The fact that there are so many open fields shows how positive result my stay has been. You can see that there is subject to dig into. In July I will most likely return to Reading. The topic is wide open and we are still working on it.

What differences do you find between the communities of research in Spain and the UK?

I see that the styles are similar, at least in mentality and ways of working. However, I think that the ICS, as a structure, facilitates a lot the relationship between researchers. In the UK, possible collaborations arise from specific seminars.

The difference then is that the ICS is like a 'permanent state of seminar' which favors dialogue much more. For example, right now I have several projects open -which will be translated into articles- both with people from group Mind-brain and from other groups. This is possible thanks to the existence of the ICS. In the UK, there is no structure that favors this, but it depends on personal initiatives.

What are your next projects?

Projects for the immediate future are the book on the conceptualizations of the human development and the article on Education emotional that we are preparing.

 In addition, while there, Professor Akrivou was offered the possibility to participate in an Unconference: a non lecture organized by several publishers and that does not follow the traditional system with a speaker but, from the beginning, all are tables of work dealing with different topics. Then he proposed me to present -which is not to present because there is no official presentation , but rather to encourage the discussion- the topic of Education emotional.

This Unconference will be held in Paris next July. It is important because the organizers are publishers and if everything goes well and enough intellectual and academic movement is generated, they offer you the possibility of being the publisher of a special issue on topic.

We have also received an invitation to make a presentation in October at a congress in Oxford and will present our work.

How does your stay fit in with the activity of group 'Mind-brain'?

For group it is an added value because it reinforces areas of Psychology and allows a philosopher like Polo to be known in the Anglo-Saxon world. Another advantage for Mente-cerebro is the relationship established between the University of Navarra and the University of Reading. If all goes well, this is a very powerful psychological line that allows a future development between the group and the University of Reading of much more scope.

We have made a psychological proposal of how to conceptualize the human development from the Philosophy of Polo, now we need to look for a validation. This opens a very big work possibility: to allow the crossover of future doctoral students from both universities to deepen the topic.