Feminist No Borders Summer School

About

The Feminist No Borders Summer School is three years in the making. The brainchild of Feminist Researchers Against Borders (FRAB) has survived a packed classroom in the Polytechnic University of Athens in the July 2018 heatwave, and was nourished in its life course as the first gathering we had in the Feminist Autonomous Centre for Research in June 2019. We are grateful to the 100+ past participants, invited speakers, and community experts of the 2-day and 3-day workshops who gave this summer school its existence.

The context of the two previous events was shaped by the “refugee crisis” that was declared to have broken out in Greece in the summer of 2015, and the “economic crisis” that was dramatised in July 2015: first, by the referendum through which the electorate rejected a new memorandum of understanding between the government of Greece and the Troika of its creditors; and then by the deal reached between the Greek government and the leaders of the Eurozone in defiance of the popular vote. The liminal position of Greece within Europe (and within the institutions comprising ‘EUrope’) has been intensified by these intertwined developments. Moreover, the multiple forms of precarity and the various velocities at which some human (and nonhuman) beings are consigned to death through the necropolitics of the “crisis regimes” have intensified divisions amongst us, along lines of racialised citizenship, class power, and heteropatriarchal normativities. Thus, we asked: What becomes possible when we inhabit the borderlands with the conscious intention of breaking down the multiple borders that have been erected to keep us apart?

While we are writing this call, right in front of us and around us we witness whole islands having been turned into spaces of administrative torture, and the sea turned into an aqueous cemetery; we hear plans for the construction of new closed detention centres on ‘hotspot’ islands; we see the imposition of a new asylum law that violates one’s very right to apply for asylum in Greece; we resist violent evictions of squats in Athens and other urban centres; we experience the privatisation and militarisation of public spaces, including incessant stop and search procedures through racial and gender profiling; we protest sexual assaults and feminicides, at the borders, on the streets, in prisons, and in homes turned into prisons.

What have we learnt from (our) being together in Athens during the previous two summers? That incisive analyses about the phenomena comprising our bordered reality, and hard-wrought experiences of struggle and resistance, can be shared and synthesised with care, passion, and joy, when feminists who oppose the international nation-state system of borders meet in a room. While we meet in Athens, we seek and offer connection, collaboration, mutual support, friendship, and love to all those who struggle for survival and for possible better worlds across the continents.

This year, with FRAB, we launch the full 7-day summer school at FAC Research in Athens. Over these intensive and reflective seven days, a combination of participants’ presentations, discussions, workshops, visits to community organisations, and keynote addresses will culminate in a collective intervention. Coinciding with the Summer School, the BRIDGES project will present its toolkit for antiracist education from an intersectional and decolonial perspective, aimed at university and community educators working toward dismantling structures of exclusion, particularly those erected by borders.

Keynote speakers:

Suryia Nayak (University of Salford, Manchester)

Sreejata Roy (Revue, New Delhi)

Sophie Richter-Devroe (Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Doha)

Deanna Dadusc (Alarm Phone, Brighton)

Latife Akyüz (Humboldt University, Berlin)

Course leader

Aila Spathopoulou, Anna Carastathis, Carmen Zografou, Myrto Tsilimpounidi, Penny Travlou

Target group

We invite applications from researchers (including those working outside academic institutions), activists, and artists. Participants are asked to propose an individual research project that will be presented during the summer school and developed in Athens.

Fee info