/01Imagination & life projects
Doctoral research into how we imagine possible lives—and how culture, signs and relationships shape what can become.
Back to the constellation02 / A CONTINUOUS BECOMINGCristian Andrés
Not one discipline.
/01 
/02/03
Cristian Andrés
Jofré Barrera.
Not one discipline.
A way of connecting.
I am Cristian Andrés Jofré Barrera—a psychologist, doctoral researcher, designer, developer and founder. My work moves between cultural-semiotic psychology, imagination and human–AI mediation.
I explore how people construct life projects, how possible futures become meaningful, and how the technologies we create participate in who we become.
Research is not apart from life. It is a way of entering it more deeply.
Academic formation
- 2023 —
Universidade Federal da Bahia (UFBA) · Universidad Alberto Hurtado
PhD candidate in Psychology, joint cotutelle; CAPES funding. Cultural-semiotic psychology, imagination, human–AI interaction and the reconfiguration of life projects.
→ Imagination & life projects - 2018 — 2020
- 2009 — 2013
A professional trajectory
More than 13 years in talent and organizational development across higher education—practice that keeps returning as research questions.
- 2013 — 2016
Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile · MIDE UC
Organizational development and people analytics.
→ Practice as a field of inquiry - 2016 — 2019
Universidad Diego Portales
Capability building, curriculum and partnerships.
→ Practice as a field of inquiry - 2019 — 2020
Universidad Católica Silva Henríquez
Talent development and innovation.
→ Practice as a field of inquiry - 2020 — 2022
Universidad San Sebastián
Career development and capability building.
→ Practice as a field of inquiry - 2022 — 2025
Universidad Central de Chile
Senior people strategy and capability work; psychology teaching.
→ Practice as a field of inquiry - 2025 —
- 2025 —
Writing & research outputs
Statuses as reported in the CV; only the published article links to its official record.
- 2022
Socio-Emotional Skills: Toward a Metacognition and Emotional Regulation Use in Higher Education Internship Process
Journal article · Liminales · vol. 11, no. 22, pp. 135–165 · Published
Editorial synopsis (not the journal abstract)Official record (DOI) · 10.54255/lim.vol11.num22.685→ Practice as a field of inquiryExplores how metacognition and emotion regulation take part in higher education internship processes.
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The article highlights the role of the supervising teacher in accompanying students through practice, and points to the limitations of current assessment and training instruments for capturing these socio-emotional skills.
- Final publication phase
Becoming a Queen: AI-Mediated Job Seeking, the Semiotic Self, and Possible Futures
Book chapter · Springer
Editorial synopsis (not the journal abstract)→ Writing, Ideas & ThoughtThis chapter asks how AI-mediated job seeking reshapes the ways people describe themselves and imagine their futures. Reading Lewis Carroll's chessboard world as a model of rules, positions and transformations, it examines how CV optimisation, matching and recommendations turn lived trajectories into machine-legible profiles.
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It proposes three notions — the labour market as a semiotic device of futurisation, AI as a normative curator of the Self, and algorithmically canalised imagination — without treating job seekers as passive.
Author abstractWhat happens when technologies that promise access to employment also shape how people describe themselves and imagine their futures? Taking AI-mediated job seeking as its point of departure, this chapter reads Lewis Carroll's chessboard world as a model of the relationship between rules, positions, and possible transformations. It examines how automated applications, CV optimisation, matching, and career recommendations translate lived trajectories into machine-legible profiles. Drawing on cultural psychology, semiotic mediation, and social theory, the chapter proposes three connected analytical notions: the labour market as a semiotic device of futurisation, AI as a normative curator of the Self, and algorithmically canalised imagination. These notions illuminate how visibility, recognition, and imagined futures are reorganised without rendering job seekers passive. The chapter differentiates algorithmic selection from the broader social conditions of employment, identifies tensions between standardisation and cultural plurality, and outlines empirical questions for a cultural psychology of algorithmic mediation.
Keywords: Algorithmic mediation; Semiotic self; Job seeking; Life projects; Chessboard World
- In editing
Between Shadows and Specters: Socioemotional Well-Being in University Life Projects through a Semiotic-Cultural Lens
Book chapter · Springer
Editorial synopsis (not the journal abstract)→ Imagination & life projectsThis chapter questions models that equate socioemotional well-being with inner coherence, planning and control, which miss students' chronic liminality. From a cultural-semiotic view it reconceives well-being as tensegrity of the Self: integrity-in-tension between normativities and possibilities, enabled by imagination as co-genetic poiesis.
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The present is shaped by shadow trajectories of the unlived past and by specters of the future, such as AI and social media. It proposes institutional care that scaffolds reflective meaning-making across transitions.
Author abstractSocioemotional well-being is cast as inner coherence, driven by individual planning and control. This approach fails to grasp students’ experience of chronic liminality, where uncertainty is inherent to development (Turner, 1969). From a cultural–semiotic view, we reconceive well-being as tensegrity of the Self—integrity-in-tension emerging from the capacity to productively sustain tensions between normativities and possibilities (Valsiner, 2002). Enabled by imagination—conceived as co-genetic poiesis (Tateo, 2017) nourished by cultural resources (Zittoun, 2016)—that pleromatizes gaps and re-semiotizes experience, the present is co-determined by shadow trajectories of the not-lived past and by “specters of the future”: artifacts and discourses—e.g., artificial intelligence and social media—that pre-delimit possibilities and impossibilities (Boulanger, 2021). We critically engage self-efficacy and life-design models that, by valorizing linear planning, overlook the adaptive function of fragmentation. Accordingly, well-being is the capacity to inhabit ambiguity, with implications for university policy: shifting from predefined goals to cultivating students’ capacities to live meaningfully within irreversible time (Valsiner, 2014). In this frame, fields of affective semiosis color directionality and value hierarchies, orienting action without fixing endpoints, thus preserving openness. Such a shift reframes institutional care: from scripting futures to scaffolding reflective, culturally mediated meaning-making across transitions amid ongoing uncertainty.
Keywords: Socioemotional well-being; Chronic liminality; Tensegrity of the self; Affective semiosis; Shadow trajectories and future specters
- In press
Eating With The Eyes: The Spect-Act And Cooking Shows as Semio-Affective Modulators of Career Development and Life Projects
Book chapter · Routledge
Editorial synopsis (not the journal abstract)→ Imagination & life projectsThis chapter reads cooking shows as semio-affective modulators of life projects and career trajectories. It proposes the spect-act: the recursive coupling of watching and acting in the interval the screen opens, where held-back action allows an affective and semiotic rehearsal of voices and futures.
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Drawing on constructive memory, the Deleuzian virtual, dialogical analysis and intelligent career theory, it links viewing to career capital, while noting that the screen cannot supply procedural mastery.
Author abstractCooking programs operate as semio-affective modulators that recalibrate meaning and anticipation within life projects and career trajectories. Located at the intersection of the psychology of food and cultural psychology, the analysis proposes the concept of the spect-act to name the recursive coupling between spectating and acting that unfolds in the interval opened by the screen, where the inhibition of immediate action makes possible an affective and semiotic rehearsal of voices, positions, and futures. Memory, reconceived in the constructive tradition (Bartlett, 1932; Wagoner, 2017, 2024), operates as imaginative reconstruction grounded in an affective attitude rather than as the retrieval of inert traces. The Deleuzian virtual (Deleuze, 1968/1994) designates a dimension of the real that insists in the tension between the factual present and unattainable images, reorganizing the present rather than postponing it toward an imagined future. Dialogical analysis (Bakhtin, 1986; Gillespie & Cornish, 2010) renders explicit the heteroglossic texture of the utterance and the perspectival layers through which the viewer is interpellated. Intelligent career theory (Arthur, Claman, & DeFillippi, 1995; Zikic, 2014) links the semio-affective process to the formation of career capital across motivational, social, and dispositional dimensions, while procedural mastery remains the province of deliberate practice that the screen cannot supply. Algorithmic platforms, reality competition formats, and influencer economies make the spect-act visible at work; resistance, audience differentiation, and the prolongation of viewing into everyday decision constitute its open horizon.
Keywords: Spect-act; Virtuality; Life project; Career development; Psychology of food
- Accepted — in editing
You Shall Not Covet? Desire and the Semiotic Regulation of Possible Futures in Digital Ecologies
Book chapter
Editorial synopsis (not the journal abstract)→ Imagination & life projectsThis chapter takes the tenth commandment, You shall not covet, as a semiotic-affective device for examining how desire is culturally regulated. Digital ecologies organise recognition through visibility, comparison and recommendation, while generative AI takes part in how people narrate and project possible selves.
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Without assuming technological determinism, the chapter explores the tension between signs rigidified around comparative scripts and meaning that stays open to reorganisation, asking how life projects remain open to transformation.
Author abstractThe tenth commandment, You shall not covet, acquires renewed analytical relevance when approached not simply as a religious prohibition, but as a semiotic-affective device for examining how desire becomes culturally regulated. Contemporary digital ecologies increasingly organize recognition through visibility, comparison, and recommendation, potentially transforming the conditions through which people orient themselves toward others and anticipate possible futures. From a semiotic-cultural perspective, coveting may be understood relationally, as the desired object acquires significance through the self–other relation, becoming not merely something to possess but a sign through which worth and possible ways of being are negotiated (Mead, 1934/1967; Valsiner, 2021). Digital platforms intensify these relational fields, while generative AI introduces further mediation by participating in how people narrate, elaborate, and project possible selves and trajectories. Rather than assuming that such technologies determine desire, this chapter examines how they may reorganize the semiotic conditions within which desire and futurity are constructed. Drawing on semiotic-cultural psychology and approaches to imagination (Zittoun, 2006; Tateo, 2018), it explores a tension between processes through which signs become rigidified around comparative cultural scripts and those through which meaning remains available for reorganization and the emergence of alternatives. The commandment therefore becomes a historical lens for examining a contemporary transformation in which comparison may no longer appear primarily as an individually regulated fault but as an ordinary condition of digital participation. The resulting question concerns how life projects remain open to transformation when the same ecologies through which futures are imagined continuously organize what becomes visible, desirable, and seemingly possible.
Keywords: Semiotic regulation; Desire; Futurity; Digital ecologies; Generative AI
- Under review (per CV)
Planning a life or living a path?
Manuscript · Human Arenas
Editorial topic note (based on title and CV)→ Imagination & life projectsA manuscript that sets two ways of understanding a life project against each other: as a plan to be executed or as a path that unfolds while it is lived.
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It addresses this tension from cultural psychology, asking what each view assumes about time, choice and development.
- Under review (per CV)
Dialogues with ghosts: Life projects in the Anthropocene
Manuscript · Theory & Psychology
Editorial topic note (based on title and CV)→ Imagination & life projectsA theoretical manuscript on life projects in the context of the Anthropocene.
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The image of dialogues with ghosts points to inherited pasts and uncertain futures that persist in how people imagine their lives, and to the question of what projecting a life means under ecological and civilisational uncertainty.
- Under review (per CV)
The tyranny of the project: A cultural-semiotic critique
Manuscript · Culture & Psychology
Editorial topic note (based on title and CV)→ Imagination & life projectsA manuscript offering a cultural-semiotic critique of the life project as a dominant ideal.
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It questions the expectation that everyone should have, plan and perform a coherent project, and considers how this demand can become a constraint on the ways people make meaning of their lives and futures.
- Under review (per CV)
Arcana Academica: A playful reflection on academic practice
Manuscript · The Qualitative Report · multi-author
Editorial topic note (based on title and CV)→ Practice as a field of inquiryA multi-author manuscript that reflects on academic practice through a playful lens.
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Taking the idea of arcana as a starting point, it treats the routines, rituals and implicit rules of academic work as material for collective reflection, opening a lighter but critical way of thinking about research life.
Writing · The Non-Linear Career
Published essays from the LinkedIn newsletter, on development, work and nonlinear trajectories. → Newsletter
You May Not Lack Talent. You May Lack the Conditions to Build It.
Editorial synopsisRead original article · LinkedInThis edition questions talent as a fixed, inherent label that people either have or lack.
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It argues that capability develops within enabling environments — the conditions of work, learning and support around a person — and considers the role artificial intelligence can play in shaping those conditions, rather than in sorting people by presumed innate ability.
Beyond the Algorithm: AI as a Dynamic Baseline for Human Development
Editorial synopsisRead original article · LinkedInThis essay approaches artificial intelligence not as a classifier of people but as an evolving reference point for interaction.
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It proposes that AI can help people revisit their experiences and hold divergent temporalities and possibilities at once, supporting human development without reducing it to fixed profiles or prescribing a single trajectory to follow.
They Promised Me Development, They Gave Me a High Salary, But What About Everything That Comes After?
Editorial synopsisRead original article · LinkedInThe article examines how organisations fragment the working life they promise to develop. Recruitment, onboarding, retention and learning are handled as separate moments, each with its own owners and metrics.
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Between them, the lived trajectory of the person at work is left without stewardship, and the initial promise of development loses its continuity.
I Learned It That Way Too. And It Took Me Years to Ask If It Made Sense.
Editorial synopsisRead original article · LinkedInA reflective critique of hiring for "cultural fit", a practice the author also learned and long repeated.
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The piece questions its underlying assumption that both identity and organisational culture are fixed, and argues that this assumption risks excluding multicultural talent whose value lies precisely in moving between ways of working and belonging.
HR Professionals Want Diverse Talent. The Process They Use Was Never Built to See It. Here Is the Gap Between Both.
Editorial synopsisRead original article · LinkedInThe article maps the gap between declared diversity goals and the recruitment standards used to pursue them. Conventional criteria tend to overlook cross-cultural capability and to read unconventional career histories as risk rather than resource.
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The result, it argues, is a process that quietly undermines the very diversity professionals say they want.
The Weight You Were Never Meant to Carry Alone
Editorial synopsisRead original article · LinkedInAn essay on unemployment as a social and psychological experience, not only an economic gap.
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It considers how social categorisation shapes the person between jobs, the liminal identity of that in-between period, and the misplaced individual responsibility often attached to it, suggesting that this weight is shared and structural rather than a purely personal failure.
Organizations manage stabilized definitions. You live an unfolding process.
Editorial synopsisRead original article · LinkedInThe edition contrasts the static categories organisations use to manage talent — roles, profiles, competency labels — with the developmental process a person actually lives.
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Identity at work, it suggests, keeps unfolding over time, while organisational definitions tend to stabilise it, creating a persistent mismatch between how people are classified and how they are becoming.
The credential arrived. The self did not.
Editorial synopsisBrowse the newsletter · LinkedInBased on the edition's public opening, this piece describes the disorientation that can follow a graduation or career transition. The credential has been achieved and formally recognised, yet the self is still reorganising around it.
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It treats this gap between an obtained title and a settled sense of identity as a meaningful experience rather than a personal failing.
Why “life projects” was never quite the right word
Editorial synopsisRead original article · LinkedInThis edition critiques the idea of the life project as a fixed plan to be designed in advance and then executed.
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It proposes instead an understanding of life as something in progress, unfolding through experience, encounters and reorientations, and asks what changes when development is no longer measured against a predefined blueprint of who one should become.
What if your career uncertainty isn’t a problem to solve?
Editorial synopsisBrowse the newsletter · LinkedInA provisional, title-informed synopsis: this edition reconsiders career uncertainty as a psychological and lived experience rather than a defect to be eliminated.
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It suggests that not knowing what comes next may carry information about a person's development and circumstances, inviting attention to what uncertainty reveals instead of rushing to close it with a fixed answer.
Connected trajectories
/01/02Potential Imagination
An initiative at the intersection of imagination, life projects and AI. Making room for futures that are not yet visible.
Practice as a field of inquiry
Organizational development, talent management and higher education. Professional experience becomes a source of questions—not a separate biography.