Held in 2019 in South Africa [1], a Winter School provided flexible, iterative and creative spaces to facilitate deliberation, with a number of discussions on key themes and entanglements in relation to Critical University Studies. These two sessions focused specifically on African Critical University Studies and connections across continents, particularly India.
Advancing African Critical University Studies
The aim of this session is to explore a flexible configuration of a CUS programme, specifically in Africa, that is capable of thinking plural forms of emancipatory higher education imaginations and futures. It is also intended to create space for developing strategic proposals for ways in which to advance an African CUS, in terms of networks across the continent, identifying and accessing funding and other resources, and creating spaces, publications and capacity for the formulation and dissemination of innovative scholarship in this emerging field.
Contributors: Mutinda Nzioki is Director for the Centre for Philosophy in Africa at the Nelson Mandela University in South Africa. Winnie V. Mitullah is a Research Professor of Development Studies (IDS) based at the Institute for Development Studies, University of Nairobi. Amos Njuguna is Professor of Finance and Dean of the School of Graduate Studies, Research and Extension at United States International University – Africa (USIU-A). Michael Okyerefo is Professor and a Cultural Sociologist and a Sociologist of Religion at the University of Ghana..
Building CUS Networks and Solidarities across Continents
We hope to work on developing networks for CUS across continents, particularly in the ‘global South’, in order to work against dominant global, neoliberal, racist, sexist and classist pressures on, and constitutive of, the University. This will hopefully build on the nodes of connection present at the Winter School, as well as thinking through the missing links in the current network and how we might productively expand it.
Contributors: Satish M. Kumar is Director for Internationalisation, School of Natural and Built Environment, & Research Fellow, Senator George J Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, Queen's University Belfast. Nandita Banerjee Dhawan is at present Joint Director and Assistant Professor of School of Women’s Studies, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India. This session was chaired by Dina Zoe Belluigi, who is a Senior Lecturer in Critical Higher Education Studies at Queen’s University Belfast.