Reimagining the university: Alternative spaces of education

There is too much complacency in academic institutions with the production of ‘intellectual content’ that is unrooted from the messiness of the real world and not aligned with transformative praxis. Such complacency, however, is intrinsic to the hegemonic academic system and its fundamentally colonial teaching and research practices and agendas. Academic institutions should, instead of adopting a ‘blind eye’ position towards most relevant issues such as extreme social-economic inequalities, ecological destruction, and violent geo-political conflicts, enforce changes in the academic system. This session of the Debating Development series aims to discuss alternative views on pedagogical spaces and knowledges as well as  a new forms of praxis in organizing and mobilizing for alternative and more vernacular forms of social change. For this, it is suggested, we need to rethink (and think beyond) our universities as alternative spaces of education. Our speakers will reflect upon the following questions: What should be understood by alternative spaces of education and how can they contribute to address the challenge of decolonizing our universities? What should be the organizing principles or logics (e.g., solidarity and collectiveness) for creating real alternative spaces of education? 

Invited speakers

Shayma Nader is an artist, curator and researcher from Palestine. For the past few years, she's been developing and curating projects focused on re(membering) the land through walking, listening and writing fiction to move towards anticolonial, antidisciplinary and land-centred imaginaries and practices. She is currently a PhD candidate in artistic research at ARIA at Sint Lucas School of Arts (KdG) and University of Antwerp.

Clod Marlan Krister Yambao is a doctoral candidate in Political Science at the Conflict Research Group of the Department of Conflict and Development Studies, Ghent University. As a researcher-activist, he served as a volunteer teacher at evacuation camps for the indigenous peoples in Metro Manila and Mindanao, Southern Philippines. He lived at the evacuation camps from 2019 to 2021 during the height of the Global COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown in solidarity with the internally displaced indigenous peoples also known as Lumad “bakwit”/ evacuees. He is also an Assistant Professor of Art Studies at the University of the Philippines Diliman where he teaches art and politics, theory, and aesthetics.

Sayan Dey is currently working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Language and Literature, Alliance University, Bangalore. He is also a faculty fellow at the Harriet Tubman Institute, York University, Canada. His latest monographs are Green Academia: Towards Eco-friendly Education Systems (Routledge, 2022) and Performing Memories, Weaving Archives: Creolized Cultures across the Indian Ocean (Anthem Press, 2023). His areas of research interests are posthumanism, decolonial studies, environmental studies, critical race studies, culinary epistemologies, and critical diversity literacy.