We have another great seminar just added to the RiCES calendar – Dr Paolo Vittoria is visiting from Brazil and will be stopping off with RiCES to deliver the following seminar:

Social Movements, Popular Education and Universities: A Proposal for an International Network (Dr Paolo Vittoria, Senior Lecturer in “Philosophy of Education” and “Popular Education and Social Movements” at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Campus of Human Sciences and Philosophy, Faculty of Education, Department of Education, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil).)

Thursday October 15th 1.30-4pm in room JBL2C04

The neo-liberal educational model presents, in its market-driven paradigm, renewed forms of repression: what we could call, in Freirean terms, as “culture of silence”. How can we break the “culture of silence”? How can we build a critical culture of social relationships?

Worldwide social movements, political and academic groups are working to develop a critical culture based on dialogue and actions of resistance against neo-liberalism, creating spaces of teaching and learning that are no longer based on competitive skills, but instead, focused on creative, collective and participatory experiences of popular education. The scope of this article is to investigate the role of popular education in experiences and policies of resistance, highlighting social movements and academic groups that, mainly in Latin America, defend the human right of people to create their own words, images and dreams. With this scope, I present in the seminar the experience of “Permanent Forum of Social Movement, Popular Education and Universities” that we are developing in Rio de Janeiro and the proposal of an international network with social movements and groups of popular education in Europe.

Do join us for this special event.

Welcome to the Autumn term of 2015!

Here is the list of RiCES seminars for this term:

Thursday September 24^th 1.30 – 4pm in room JBL0W07:

Mike and Sarah will be reporting on their recent trip to the Ecoversities Unconference. You can read more about this gathering here: : http://enlivenedlearning.com/2015/08/12/gathering-of-kindred-folk-re-imagining-higher-education/

Or Mikes account here: https://nearymike.wordpress.com/2015/08/28/the-power-of-abundant-friendship/

Thursday October 8^th 1.30-4pm in room VH0001:

Dr. Kai Heidemann, Lecturer of Sociology, Maastricht University, Netherlands will be presenting his work from research carried out in Argentina:

“Another School is Possible: Neoliberal Crisis, Popular Protest and the Rise of Cooperative Schooling in Argentina”

What explains the rapid rise of a community-based co-operative schooling movement in Argentina in recent years? What is this movement about? Where is it going? Moreover, how might cooperative schooling in Argentina be related to other social movements and educational projects in other parts of the world? In this talk, Dr. Kai Heidemann offers a sociological perspective on the emergence and expansion of cooperative schools in the urban setting of Buenos Aires. Drawing from a multi-year research project, Dr. Heidemann tells the story of how a small but influential network of grassroots actors worked to bring the cooperative schooling movement to life from within a situation of massive politico-economic crisis and widespread public protest during the early 2000s.

Thursday October 29^th 1.30-4pm in room MB1006:

Anything to present? A catch up on the activities of the RiCES group.

If you would like to do a presentation or talk about your work, let me know and I will put together an agenda for the session which is reserved for members and associates to talk about their current work, or discuss future plans, or, of course, make suggestions for collaborations, etc..

Thursday November 19^th 1.30-4pm in room BH1201:

Dr Glenn Rikowski, Independent Scholar

“Crises, Commodities and Education: Disruptions, Eruptions, Interruptions and Ruptures”

After a brief analysis of the concept of crisis (drawing on the work of Roitman, 2014) and following an outline and critique of some previous work (Rikowski, 2014) – on the Classical Theory of Education Crisis (in the light of Sarup, 1982) and philosophical perspectives on education crises – Rikowski explores the notion of crisis in relation to phenomena pertaining to the social forms of capitalist education. Starting out from Marx’s analysis of the ‘two great classes of commodities’ (following Adam Smith), Rikowski charts what ‘crisis’ might mean, and could be, in terms of the two commodity forms pertaining to educational processes in capitalist society. The final part of the paper explores actual and possible empirical manifestations of these crises of the commodity form in terms of the notions of disruption, eruption, interruption and rupture. It is argued that last two of these forms of crisis pose particular problems for the continuance and development of capitalism in general and the national capital and capitalist education in particular.

We may feel we need one more session in December to finish off the term, but we can decide this at a later date. I do hope you can all make it to the sessions, there will be more info on individual session on the RiCES blog and any readings will be sent out to you as I get them.

I look forward to seeing you all and having interesting and critical discussions throughout the coming year.

The first meeting will be held on Thursday, September 24th 2015 in room JBL0W07 at 1.30 – 4pm.

1.30 – 3pm Mike and Sarah will be sharing their experience of the Tamera Peace and Research Centre in southern Portugal.

We will be hearing about the ‘un-conference’ they attended recently and you can read Mike’s account here:

https://nearymike.wordpress.com/2015/08/28/the-power-of-abundant-friendship/

Then at 3pm we will be joined by Lyndsey Kemsley from the Research Office so that she can get to know the group and we can talk through what funding might be available this year for any research people would like to do.

See you on the 24th!

Dear All,

Welcome to this new academic year, I hope you have all had a good summer conferencing, holidaying, and writing!

We have some exciting things coming up this between now and the winter break:

A session hearing from Dr. Sarah Amsler and Prof. Mike Neary about their experiences in Portugal at the Enlivened Learning Gathering: http://enlivenedlearning.com/2015/08/12/gathering-of-kindred-folk-re-imagining-higher-education/

Dr. Kai Heidemann, Lecturer of Sociology, Maastricht University, Netherlands will be coming on the 8th October to deliver a seminar on:

“Another School is Possible: Neoliberal Crisis, Popular Protest and the Rise of Cooperative Schooling in Argentina”

and on Thursday November 19th we have Dr. Glenn Rikowski talking about

“Crises, Commodities and Education: Disruptions, Eruptions, Interruptions and Ruptures”

More on these and other sessions soon!