VIRTUAL EVENT
Date: Thursday 8 July 2021
Time: 10.30am-2pm
Host: Dr Kathryn Telling, Lecturer in Sociology, University of Sussex
Zoom link: https://universityofsussex.zoom.us/j/91754598353
CHEER Writing Retreat
An informal and encouraging space to write alongside each other as colleagues. This retreat will comprise of chunks of individual writing time and discussions of the frustrations and pleasures of writing in and about higher education. No-one will be expected to read aloud anything they have written. The opportunity is simply to share - if wanted - how well we feel we are progressing in our chosen tasks, whatever they may be. Attendance can be for all or part of the day.
Kathryn Telling's work explores the critical sociology of higher education, particularly the humanities disciplines and their relationship to social class.
_____________________________________________________________________
AN ONLINE OPEN RESEARCH SEMINAR CO-HOSTED BY CHEER & CIE
Date: Thursday 3 June 2021
Time: 11am-12.30pm
Speaker: Dr Nazmi Al-Masri, Associate Professor of Education, The Islamic University of Gaza, Palestine
Zoom link: https://universityofsussex.zoom.us/j/95136810333 (Meeting ID: 951 3681 0333)
Palestinian Higher Education in Protracted Crises: Identity, Resilience and Hope
Palestinian higher education institutions were born under military occupation, and have been subjected to many protracted restrictions - including isolation and siege. Drawing on moral principles and ethical values - especially asserting identity, resilience and hopefulness - they strive to overcome these challenges and offer quality educational services through diverse and creative avenues, such as developing wide international academic networks, and making the best of available technologies.
This seminar will shed light on the state of Palestinian higher education institutions today.
_____________________________________________________________________
VIRTUAL EVENT
Date: Wednesday 19 May 2021
Organiser: Emily Danvers, Lecturer in Higher Education Pedagogy, Department of Education, University of Sussex
Zoom link: https://universityofsussex.zoom.us/j/98383349863 (Meeting ID: 983 8334 9863)
CHEER Writing Retreat
An informal and encouraging space to write alongside each other as colleagues, this retreat will comprise of chunks of individual writing time interspersed with whole-group meeting and also meeting in smaller break-out groups to discuss the frustrations and pleasures of writing in and about higher education. No-one will be expected to read aloud anything they have written. The opportunity is simply to share - if wanted - how well we feel we are progressing in our chosen tasks. Whatever they may be. Attendance can be for all or part of the day.
_____________________________________________________________________
VIRTUAL EVENT
Date: Thursday 29 April 2021
Time: 2-3.30pm
Speaker: Ali Kassem, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Arab Council for Social Sciences, Beirut Urban Lab, American University of Beirut (funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York)
Zoom link: https://universityofsussex.zoom.us/j/94679482524 (Meeting ID: 946 7948 2524)
Modernity/Coloniality and Research in the Westernised Academy
This session offered an introduction into decolonial theory, particularly in its Latin American strand and the Modernity/Decoloniality collective’s work, focusing on the ‘Westernised University’ as an institution of Modernity/coloniality. Based on this, it raised and explored key issues and debates around research from within such an institution. The session also proposed ‘immersive decolonial listening’ as a reflexive practice that can support researchers in decolonising their projects, the university, as well as their own beings and knowing.
In addition to being a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the American University of Beirut, Ali is a school tutor at the School of Law, Politics and Sociology at the University of Sussex where he obtained his PhD in 2020. He is also a steering committee member at the Sussex Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies. Ali has previously held research and/or teaching positions at the Ludwig-Maximillian University in Munich, the Ecole Des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, the Lebanese Centre for Policy Studies, the Lebanese American University, AUB, and others. His main interests are in Post-, anti-, and decolonial work, ethnic and racial studies, inequalities, Islam and Knowledge making on which Ali has published multiple peer-reviewed and non-academic articles and essays. His current research focuses on the lived experiences of discrimination and exclusion of visibly Muslims in Lebanon with a particular focus on the role of urbanity – as an institution of modernity/coloniality.
_____________________________________________________________________
VIRTUAL EVENT
Date: Wednesday 3 February 2021
Speaker: Alyosxa Tudor, Senior Lecturer in Gender Studies, Centre for Gender Studies, SOAS, University of London
Decolonizing Trans/Gender Studies? Teaching gender, race and sexuality in times of the rise of the global right
Alyosxa will argue that a decolonial perspective on ‘gender’ means conceptualizing it as always already trans. Their object of investigation is ‘gender’ as a category and ‘gender studies’ as a field of knowledge. In order to discuss what decolonizing trans/gender studies in Europe could mean, Alyosxa aims to bring different strands together that have been held apart so far: resistance against global attacks on gender studies, resistance against transphobic feminism, and the ‘decolonising the curriculum’ movement in the UK. A critical focus on Eurocentric knowledge and truth claims means to define ‘Europe’ as a complex set of geopolitical, historical and epistemological processes and not just as a neutral location. At British universities, a mostly student-led movement has started to emerge that fights for decolonizing higher education. This movement is inspired by transnational student activism like Rhodes/Fees must fall in South Africa and calls for challenging racist, colonialist, nationalist and neoliberal paradigms in knowledge production by addressing both issues of epistemology and access to higher education. Applying central political claims of the ‘decolonising the curriculum’ movement, Alyosxa explores potentials and challenges of the task of ‘decolonizing’ trans/gender studies in Europe/the Global North. With this, their intervention opens up a discussion on how to conceptualize knowledge on ‘transgender’ with a central focus on decolonial and transnational perspectives.
_____________________________________________________________________
VIRTUAL BOOK LAUNCH
Date: Tuesday 8 December 2020
Virtual Book Launch image gallery
_____________________________________________________________________
VIRTUAL LECTURE
Date: Wednesday 25 November 2020
Speaker: Paul Roberts, University of Sussex
Graduate School Managers: Affective Lives in the Neoliberal University
Based on interviews with eight individuals who had served as Graduate School Managers in eleven different institutions (eight Pre-1992 institutions and three Post-1992 institutions), Paul Roberts will discuss the affective lives of Graduate School Managers in the context of the UK Neoliberal University.
_____________________________________________________________________
VIRTUAL EVENT
Date: Thursday 15 October 2020
Speaker: Professor Rebecca Boden, Research Director of the Social Research Programme at Tampere University, Finland
Paying the Piper? The governance of vice-chancellors' remuneration in Australian and UK universities
There is a long running, cyclical public debate in the UK and Australia - and indeed in many other countries - regarding the escalating levels of vice-chancellors’ remuneration in publicly funded universities. These debates occur at times of severe pay restraint for most university staff, accompanied by contractual issues such as increasing casualisation. Governments repeatedly promise greater oversight, but little appears to change.
In this presentation of work conducted with Julie Rowlands (Deakin University, Australia), Rebecca Boden will critically analyse the determination of vice-chancellors’ remuneration, framing it as a governance issue. In the context of corporatised public universities, she will argue that reforms in university governance towards greater marketisation and financialisation may have contributed to the shifting nature and increasing levels of vice-chancellors’ remuneration in Australia and the UK. The stark conclusion is that much of the remuneration is more akin to economic rent rather to appropriate salary payment for work undertaken. In conclusion, proposals for fundamental governance reform will be set out.
(This presentation is from: ‘Paying the Piper: The governance of vice-chancellors’ remuneration in Australian and UK universities’ by Rebecca Boden and Julie Rowlands, forthcoming in Higher Education Research & Development).
