4 MARCH

SOAS

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10am

On Academic Freedom (Amal Ahluwalia and Lisa Tilley)

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11am 

Reading Group: Queer (in) Crisis 'Occupation as Dead End' [access reading here] (Fugitive Planning)

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12.30pm 

Birkbeck-SOAS Joint Rally

 

1pm

Care, Austerity, and the University: An open conversation on families, social care, and wellbeing in higher education (2/2) (Sarah Pett)

 

3pm 

Decolonising Contracts in Higher Education (Maia Holtermann and Jo Tomkinson)

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BIRKBECK

 

4.30pm

Australian Counter Histories (Dr Sarah Keenan, Law, Birkbeck and Dr Samia Khatun, SOAS)

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In her book ‘Australianama: the South Asian Odyssey in Australia’, Samia Khatun weaves together the stories of various peoples colonised by the British Empire to chart a history of South Asian diaspora. At this teach-out Samia will be in conversation with Sarah Keenan (author of ‘Subversive Property: Law and the Production of Spaces of Belonging’) to think about racial hierarchy and ordering across different colonial sites. How was terra nullius legally crafted in Australia? How was the distinction between dominion and imperium constructed in the British settler and non-settler colonies? What different formations of property were produced to facilitate colonisation? And what does it mean to think through these histories from the heart of empire?

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5pm

2018: The Year That Shook UK Universities  (Felicity Callard, Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck)

 

The 2018 strike was the longest strike in HE in the UK (we’ll wait to see if #UCUstrike overtakes it). But it was not just the length of the strike that made it distinctive. This teach out will focus on what made that period of industrial action so powerful. We changed the national narrative on the sustainability of defined benefit pensions. We collectively grasped what was happening to universities under our noses. And for many, the previously implicit contract between them and the universities they work for was broken. From activist research to memes, come talk with Felicity Callard about what happened in 2018 and how it helps us understand #UCUstrike

6pm
Free Our Unions (Campaigning Against Anti-Trade Union Laws)

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Britain already has what Tony Blair proudly called “the most restrictive union laws in the western world.” Now the Tories plan to impose “minimum service requirements” in the transport sector, effectively outlawing effective strikes by railway and other transport workers. How can we confront anti-union legislation, both current and proposed?

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