"Fuller Geographies: An Open Space for Participatory Geographies" Wednesday August 28th: 3-6pm UCL Department of Geography Room G07 University College London Pearson Building Gower Street London. WC1E 6BT In this session the Participatory Geographies Research Group (PyGyRG) would like to invite all to discuss ways forward from the current juncture of university reform and restructuring; and the broader interrelated challenges brought about as a consequence of the wider contexts of political and socio-economic crises. In particular, PyGyRG welcomes discussions around the themes of our ‘communifesto’ which was developed as a response to the increasing marginalization, exploitation, anxiety and stress wrought by these current transformations: antipodefoundation.org/2012/10/15/symposium-on-the-participatory-geographies-research-groups-communifesto-for-fuller-geographies-towards-mutual-security/ antipodefoundation.org/2012/12/17/symposium-on-pygyrgs-communifesto-for-fuller-geographies-authors-reply-to-critical-responses/#more-2163 Through the session, we would like to engage with other research groups to consider how it is relevant to them and the extent to which their members are involved, or feel they would like to be, in the tactics and strategies outlined within the communifesto. Here-in we would like to highlight the following issues for discussion, and welcome further points: · Possible spaces for mutual aid, and strategies we can share for securing our own and Geography’s relevance and futures · The effects of ‘widening participation’ agendas that are currently being subsumed within neoliberal discourse; · The positive and negative influence of ‘impact’ factors, and what these mean vis-a-vis participatory approaches to research, teaching, and the future of academia. · The increasing consumerisation of the student body – what are the impacts of treating students as ‘customers’ and degrees as tools to improve ‘employability? · Ways of grappling with these issues in ‘creative ways’, opening out our ‘strategies and tactics’ into playful and emotionally re-energizing opportunities, to find a way out of the trapped and tired positions that many communifesto respondents articulated. With this platform for discussion we hope to move away from difficulties of closed conversations and an inward looking politics that has troubled social movements and radical scholars in the past. But most of all we hope to create greater connectivity, creativity and hope within and beyond academia. Sam Halvorsen PhD Candidate geog.ucl.ac.uk/about-the-department/people/research-students/sam-halvorsen/
Posted on: Sat, 15 Jun 2013 21:09:09 +0000
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