How can early childhood education contribute to empowering people to think and act in a future-oriented and sustainable way that is based on human rights and natural ethical premises and enables democratic, peaceful and interspecies coexistence on a global level?

The world is confronted with a multitude of existential crises that require a global perspective. One of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals formulated in the UN's 2030 Agenda is to ensure that all learners acquire the necessary competences to promote sustainable development by 2030. In particular, contributions to the following key topics in early childhood education and its research are welcome: war, displacement and flight; antidemocracy, experiences of inequality and group-focused enmity; climate change and the destruction of the more-than-human world in the Anthropocene.

The conference invites participants not only to reflect on the outlined issues from a disciplinary perspective, but also to adopt an international comparative perspective. The location of the conference is therefore particularly inviting for academics and researchers from different countries (above all Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Germany) to engage in dialogue with each other and to work out country-specific characteristics as well as commonalities and future perspectives.