Activist Academy
What do ‘activism’ and ‘being an activist’ mean in today’s political context? What are the different options that citizen groups and (activist) social movements have to organize around the topics they consider urgent? How to organize a sound and constructive movement or action group? What can be learnt from the past’s social movements and mobilizations? How can theories on social movements, activism and resistance be useful for organizing an impactful action? How to combine activism and academia and/or be an activist scholar?
These questions are central to the "Activist Academy", a collaboration between OtherWise, the Sociology of Development and Change Group and the Centre for Space, Place and Society at Wageningen University.
Vision and scope
Activist scholarship can be broadly defined as politically engaged scholarship that aims at furthering justice and equality. Seeking to bridge the divide between theory and practice, researcher and research participants, and academic and political domains, activist scholarship can be reflected in diverse methodological approaches that emphasize direct engagement with the research participants as well as in teaching critical thinking and tools for activism. It also entails enacting the university as we want it to be, by slowing down and centralizing care and horizontality in our academic relations, and by bringing students and lecturers together in making space for activism within the university.
The Activist Academy as a cluster seeks to provide a space where activists, scholars, students, and lecturers can come together to explore the relation between academia and activism, and between politics and scholarship.In terms of research, the cluster engages in research that studies and analyses processes of resistance, protest and activism across the globe with respect to the dominant economic and political order and the human and environmental damage it produces. In doing so,the involved researchersoften apply engaged and participatory methodologies and problematize the relation between researcher and the researched, between activism and science, and activism and academic teaching.
Activities
The core of the Activist Academy is a series of interactive workshops that takes place throughout the academic year. Each workshop centralizes a scholar activist dilemma, an activist strategy, a social movement, or a topical activist issue. These workshops might take the form of a role play, a game, a film viewing, or a discussion and take place every second Thursday of each teaching period.