Reimagining Global Justice within and through the University

What does it mean to be a scholar committed to the pursuit of global justice through, for example, combatting climate change, rising economic inequality, and racial and gendered violence and domination?

This Summer School engages with the challenges of global injustice as it manifests across the Global North/South divide, and the role of the university in both addressing and reproducing these injustices. We will explore whether and how global injustices might be addressed through knowledges, traditions, and practices within and beyond the university.

Participants will explore:
What are the roles of universities and scholars in addressing global injustices?
Can universities and scholars dismantle global patterns of coloniality, domination, and inequality that structure intellectual work, such as Northern-oriented research funding, valorisation of knowledge, and symbolic power? Or does their very existence necessarily serve to retrench these structures and modes of valuation?
Can these structures be resisted or reversed – and if so, how, and under what conditions?
The Summer School will bring together early-career social science scholars working in, trained in, or from the Global South, who are concerned with global justice. They will be joined by a diverse, interdisciplinary, and international team of 14 convenors from five continents.

Offering an innovative combination of pedagogical formats, this week-long programme aims to provide a platform for participants to critically reflect on navigating, reshaping, and reimagining a university for global justice. It will also build a network to support such endeavors through collaboration and critical engagement.

The programme will be delivered through plenary sessions and seminars on global justice, "Big Question" discussions on the role of the university, and collaborative clinics in which participants discuss their proposals to challenge the university's role in shaping global justice.

Course leader

Deval Desai
Law School, University of Edinburgh, UK
Christopher Gevers
School of Law, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa
Rebecca Tapscott
Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy, Geneva Graduate Institute, Switzerland

Target group

Target groups
Leading early-career scholars from multiple disciplinary locations (including anthropology, sociology, law, political science, international relations, history, economics, and other social science disciplines), working in, trained in, or from the Global South; who are concerned with global justice; and who hold a doctoral degree.

We particularly encourage applications from those who hold, or are transitioning into, their first faculty position, broadly understood.

Course aim

Offering an innovative combination of pedagogical formats, this week-long programme aims to provide a platform for participants to critically reflect on navigating, reshaping, and reimagining a university for global justice. It will also build a network to support such endeavors through collaboration and critical engagement.

Fee info

EUR 300: payable until May 28
EUR 270: Early bird fee, payable until April 30

Scholarships

Financial aid is available.