Grand winner of the Bevica Scholarship Programme 2025 lecturer category: “Life does not move in neat, standardised blocks. Our teaching should reflect that.”

The Bevica Foundation has awarded the grand prize in the Bevica Scholarship Programme 2025 to Associate Professor Naja Berg Hougaard. The award is based on her strong project idea and pitch, which explores how the principles of universal design can be translated into concrete actions that promote inclusion and well-being in teaching and learning environments.

“What would teaching look like if flexibility was not the exception, but the norm? Imagine two clocks: one is a standard school watch. Rigid, ticking smoothly and requiring everyone to move forward in tact. The second is more fluid. The visor bends, stretches, pauses and moves at its own pace. It's the flexible clock I want to explore more closely — and find ways to create teaching that doesn't force everyone to go to the beat.”

In her project, Naja focuses on how teaching can be organized so that students with different abilities, experiences and backgrounds experience greater participation, well-being and community.

The aim is to develop tools and methods that make teaching and learning environments more accessible and inclusive:

Critical disability studies and especially the idea of “crip time” give us a different way of thinking. “Crip time” reminds us that bodies and minds move differently. It challenges the assumption that learning should take place at a consistent pace, and it invites us to understand time as flexible, relational, and human.”

The Grand Prize gives Naja the opportunity to travel and draw inspiration from international research environments within inclusion and disability. She plans to visit both Sheffield University in the UK and Montclair State University in the US to draw inspiration on how teaching can become more inclusive in Danish education environments.

Follow her journey here.

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