Juan-Miguel Díaz Castro
MA Education, and Classroom Teacher
Doctoral Researcher
Climate emotions and hopelessness, Sustainability education, Climate change education, Democratic education, Teacher education
Teacher education, school and society
Faculty of Education and Psychology
I am a doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Education and Psychology, investigating climate-change hopelessness among senior high-school students. My research is interdisciplinary, supervised by Prof. Maria Ojala, and funded by the Eudaimonia Institute spearhead research project ClimHope (2026-2029).
My research aims to contribute to the understanding of hopelessness in youth, identifying its types, sources, and possible resilience factors. The overarching goal is to explore the implications for youth well-being, democracy and teacher education. The research topic emerges as a natural response to my time as a teacher, as well as a continuation of my previous work on teacher education linking sustainability and democratic education in the Erasmus+ Teacher Academy TESTEd (2022–2025), and the NOSTE-funded project JUUREVA (2025–2026).
I sit on the Sustainability and Responsibility Working Group (KeVa) of the University of Oulu as the representative of the Faculty of Education and Psychology. Before (re-)joining the university in 2022, I taught for two decades in Finnish upper secondary schools, comprehensive schools, adult education centers, and in Oulu prison.
Research interests
- Sustainability education
- Climate emotions, hopelessness
- Democratic education and active citizenship
- Critical perspectives on AI in education and democracy
- Politics of recognition, neurodivergence and gender
Researcher information
Contact information
Phone number
Postal address
P.O. Box 2000, FIN-90014
