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Louise Sommer Harvey
Helping educators, students, and institutions navigate learning, curiosity, and change in an AI-shaped world.
Workshops • Speaking • Facilitation • Educational Development • Collaboration
Cross-Cultural Perspectives
In this space, I explore cultural and creative intelligence through the invisible threads connecting our personal psyches to the collective history of the world. Here, we examine human language through the lens of art, history, and cultural narratives.
We often perceive culture as a static set of shared behaviors or traditions merely to observe. However, culture is a living narrative carried deep within us. It shapes our empathy, our capacity for judgment, the patterns of connection we form, the very ways we communicate, and how we learn. Whether through the lens of educational theory, the study of epigenetics, or the transformative power of storytelling, we are constantly molded by the stories we inherit and the stories we choose to tell.
Why Foreign Films May Be One of the Best Tools for Developing Cultural Intelligence
Watching foreign films, TV shows, and reading books from other cultures is a way to train, expand and broaden our cultural intelligence. Some years ago, I found myself reflecting on the transformative power of foreign narratives. Having spent much of my life traveling, living, and studying in diverse countries, I’ve always been drawn to the rich tapestry of human culture. My career, particularly my work with immigrants, refugees, and expats, has deepened this connection.
Louise Sommer
Jan 30, 20255 min read
How Culture Shapes the Way We Communicate
How Culture Shapes Communication in Higher Education Teaching. Explore how culture shapes communication in higher education and transforms university teaching. This article helps university lecturers understand how communication influences student engagement, belonging, and learning outcomes. Discover how creativity, cultural awareness, and pedagogical communication come together to support more meaningful, human-centred teaching practices in diverse and evolving university c
Louise Sommer
Jan 26, 20254 min read
Intercultural Leadership as Creative Intelligence: How University Lecturers Transform Difference into New Ways of Thinking
Here's some deep thoughts on intercultural teaching and the creative spark within human difference. In my work across cultures and higher education environments, I have noticed something both simple and profound: Every genuine intercultural encounter contains the possibility of expanding how we think. Sometimes this happens in obvious ways:a classroom discussion suddenly shifts because a student interprets a concept through an entirely different cultural lens.
Louise Sommer
Jan 196 min read
The University Lecturer as a Bridge Between Cultures: Intercultural Leadership in Higher Education
Let’s say it honestly: university lecturers hold a profoundly important role in shaping not only knowledge, but also human development, intellectual confidence, and the quality of how people learn to engage with complexity and difference. Although many academics enter universities primarily as researchers, specialists, and creators of knowledge, teaching still carries a deeply human responsibility. Let's explore this a little deeper.
Louise Sommer
Dec 10, 20256 min read
From the Inside Out: Reggio Emilia and the Practice of Inner & Cultural Pedagogy in Higher Education
Years down the track, I came to realise that my time with the Reggio Emilia method taught me that teaching, when lived fully, is not about control but about culture: a living dialogue between people, ideas, creation, and place. In the Reggio Emilia method, a classroom is called an atelier, meaning a “studio of becoming.” That phrase stayed with me long after I left Italy. Ideally, this is how an auditorium should feel in higher education.
Louise Sommer
Dec 2, 20254 min read
The Reggio Emilia Method: When Creative Intelligence Shapes Complex Learning in Higher Education
For me, experiencing the Reggio Emilia institutions in Italy was extraordinary, and it left a deep mark on my educational philosophy moving forward. It revealed that education is not only about transferring knowledge; it is about shaping belonging, identity, and connection. These schools embodied the idea that creativity is not a luxury. It is how communities rebuild. It is how learners find their voice, and how societies imagine and build their future.
Louise Sommer
Nov 3, 20254 min read
The Civilisations That Understood Human Learning Before We Did
Picture Alexandria in its golden age; a bustling port city where ships from Greece, Egypt, North Africa, and the Levant docked daily. The harbour was a mosaic of cultures: Phoenician traders unloading amphorae of wine, Egyptian farmers selling grain by the sack, Greek philosophers deep in debate under the colonnades. In a place like Alexandria, empathy was profitable. Traders who could anticipate the needs, customs, and sensitivities of foreign merchants thrived.
Louise Sommer
Sep 21, 20256 min read
The Art of Teaching, Designing & Thinking: Creative Intelligence in Higher Education
In a world that increasingly demands innovation, adaptability, and clarity, we often forget that the most powerful solutions come from the ability to think across disciplines. Over the years, I’ve come to realise that my most meaningful work doesn’t live in a single domain. It lives in the spaces between where psychology meets art, where teaching becomes design, and where coaching becomes a shared language of empowered learning. This is what I call creative intelligence in mo
Louise Sommer
Aug 18, 20254 min read
How Standing in Front of a Multicultural Classroom Shaped My Approach to Education, Empathy, and Creative Intelligence
I still remember the moment clearly. In front of me sat backpackers from France and South America in their twenties, published authors and successful artists from across Australia, emerging entrepreneurs, and three very senior researchers who wanted to learn how to communicate their expertise beyond academia. I realised something important: The workshop I had carefully prepared could not simply be delivered to this group. It had to be created with them.
Louise Sommer
Jun 23, 20254 min read
Gertrude Stein and the Lost Art of Creative Intellectual Communities
A Salon of Bold Beings. Imagine walking into a room where modernism was being invented in real-time. That was Gertrude’s salon. On any given evening, you might encounter Pablo Picasso arguing with Matisse while Hemingway scribbled notes for A Moveable Feast. Stein's salon wasn’t just a social gathering. It was, in fact, a crucible of cultural revolution. Gertrude Stein teaches us that to live creatively is not merely to make things. It is also about making, and holding space,
Louise Sommer
May 5, 20253 min read
Jonna Jinton: The Power of Authentic Living and the Creative Dance
In an age of fast-paced digital consumption and curated perfection, there are rare artists who touch something deeper. Someone, who remind us of the raw, unfiltered beauty of life itself. Jonna Jinton is one such artist. A Swedish creative powerhouse, she has captured hearts across the globe through an unwavering commitment to authenticity, cultural honesty, and an artistic dance with her heritage that is as real as the northern winds that sweep through her village.
Louise Sommer
Apr 24, 20253 min read
Duck à l'orange & Big Dreams: How Rachel Khoo’s Little Paris Kitchen Changed My Creative Life
Once upon a time, in a tiny kitchen, in the heart of Paris, a woman named Rachel Khoo, opened a jar of mustard, stirred up a sauce, and with a flick of her red lips and a glint in her eye, inspired a creative revolution. Not just in her viewers’ kitchens, but in their hearts. I was one of them! And I have been a huge fan of Rachel Khoo ever since. So, I bought duck. I zested oranges. I baked cakes with names I couldn’t pronounce. And I cooked for the people I love.
Louise Sommer
Mar 27, 20252 min read
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