This PhD course gives participants an opportunity to intensively engage with some of the major foundational movements in critical social theory, so that they can continue to explore contemporary expansions of those movements in their own research. It is organized as an intensive discussion seminar over the course of four weeks (with two 3-hour sessions/week). […]
Transformative & Participatory Qualitative Research Approaches & Methods provides PhD candidates and early-career scholars conceptual and hands-on methodological engagement with transformative, participatory and action research approaches that use creative and arts-based research methods and techniques to foster the inclusion and engagement of diverse, often marginalised perspectives and to bring into focus, examine and transform narratives, […]
The focus for the 28 October 2020 Transformative Learning Hub gathering was how to engage with anti-oppression in our research, teaching and societal engagement. Why Anti-Oppression? Prompted by the murder on George Floyd and the global growth of the Black Lives Matter movement, a dialogue with colleagues at CSPS resulted in the decision to adopt […]
𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐝𝐨𝐞𝐬 ‘𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐬𝐦’ 𝐚𝐧𝐝 ‘𝐛𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐧 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐬𝐭’ 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐚 𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐜? What are the challenges activists and marginalised groups face? How do Covid-19 restrictions deepen and disclose existing inequalities and injustices? How do physical distancing and quarantine life shape, limit and open up new avenues for activism and resistance? These questions are central […]
The 2020 CSPS Annual Day was held online on 8 October 2020. The interactive session was organised around the metaphor of trees growing together in a forest. Imagine for a moment each CSPS member as an individual ‘tree’ within the broader CSPS and WUR ‘forest’, a superorganism of sorts in which we together grow, adapt […]
One of teaching’s key objectives is to nurture students’ growth into active and informed citizens and changemakers, equipped with knowledge, skills and attitudes that enable them to creatively and critically respond to the complex challenges of our times. Yet many of our teaching practices in the realm of higher education are outdated, too often focusing […]
The Transformative Learning Hub (TL Hub) seeks to blur the boundaries conventionally drawn between research and teaching. Organised as a horizontal community of learners, it expressly brings together researchers, educators, students, changemakers and activists across different disciplines and fields at Wageningen University and beyond who are committed to engaging with transformative learning theory and practices […]
To kick off the CSPS Year of Anti-Oppression the Political Ecology reading group met on October 15th to discuss Frank Wilderson’s Afropessimism. Nine people attended the reading group from within and beyond CSPS, which signals a growing interest and commitment to exploring this topic together. Dr. Sierra Deutsch facilitated our meeting with the following ground […]
In Bukavu, a rapidly growing city in the troubled east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, neither claimants of land nor claimants of authority can solely rely on one identity or institution in order to secure their claims. Lasting recognition of claims requires constant renegotiation across a shifting diversity of competing individuals and their practices; […]
In an increasing multicultural society, the stories we tell of the past can bring us together or push us further apart. Through travel and tourism we encounter new cultures and perspectives on such stories of the past in certain places. The stories of slavery as told through slavery heritage tourism, is not merely ready-made but […]
How do urban gardens work as sources of food? That is, in a nutshell, the central question of this thesis. Urban gardening and other food alternatives have received growing attention in relation to issues such as food quality and the environmental impacts of food production. However, we know little about how urban gardens actually provide […]
Ampumuza, C., Duineveld, M., René Van der Duim, R. (2020) The most marginalized people in Uganda? Alternative realities of Batwa at Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. World Development Perspectives 20: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wdp.2020.100267 Indigenous peoples such as the Batwa in Uganda are predominantly seen as marginalised groups, leaving little room for foregrounding their power, influence and involvement in tourism and […]
The CSPS Foodscapes cluster is looking for BSc and MSc students interested in researching emerging foodscapes in times of uncertainty. Covid-19 has displayed many of the vulnerabilities and externalities of our current corporate food regime, such as unequal access to food, the dependence of our food supply on global supply chains, the exploitation of (migrant) […]
For more information: https://www.wur.nl/nl/activiteit/Understanding-the-psychological-and-social-environmental-determinants-driving-young-infant-feeding-practices-among-Rwandan-households-a-salutogenic-approach.htm The defense will be livestreamed via the following link https://weblectures.wur.nl/P2G/Player/Player.aspx?id=C217
Political ecologists recognize that environmental issues are political and therefore intricately tied to social and economic issues. We also understand that such issues have shared (political) root causes and that addressing ecological problems means addressing social and economic problems at the structural level as well. And although the PE Reading Group has included readings by […]
cover image by 帅 郭 via Pixabay For more information and to register: https://www.wur.nl/en/show/Critical-Gender-Studies-in-the-Life-Sciences-domains-.htm Introduction & objectives of the course Today, research in the life sciences done to support sustainable development is increasingly interdisciplinary and demands better understanding of roles of gender and other differences, such as race and colonial history. This course directly enables […]
Anthropometric determinism, the 19th century notion that the human body, individual personalities, cultural traits, and social groups can be reduced to numbers, is back. The critical social sciences were, essentially, forged alongside, and fighting against, this idea that informed pseudoscientific practices, namely Euro-American racist ideologies at the heart of so many anti-immigrant and refugee sentiments, […]
In the period of quarantine The Covid-10 crisis has isolated many people but it didn’t stop people from sharing stories about the situation and about what comes back after quarantine. In many countries one can witness a very contrasting set of discourses (see for an overview Matteo, 2020). Social cohesion and solidarity are praised, nationalists’ discourses […]
Can online meetings be generative and energizing! Yes, they can! On June 10th, we had the fourth meeting of our U.lab 2x journey, in which teachers and students at Wageningen University explore how to integrate head, heart and hands in Higher Education. Since The Netherlands went into ‘intelligent lockdown’ mid-March, we have been organizing our […]
Tuesday June 9 | 15.00 CEST | ZOOM (link will be shared after registration) The CSPS Foodscapes Cluster warmly invites you to join this online public lecture. Please share with others that might be interested! To register, please fill in this form: https://forms.gle/tC9wHCs8cHh8QNgo8 Foodscapes after Covid: from corporatism to the politics of possibility The pandemic […]
Introduction Being an artist and being in quarantine, she did what artists have always done — make wonder out of limitation, privation, and boredom; illuminate the universal through the tiny aperture of the deeply personal. Maria Popova, April 2020, reviewing work by Sophie Blackall. Maria Popova poses a challenge for artists working within Corona restrictions. I had […]
Thursday May 14, 2020 | 11.00 am (CET)| Weblectures.wur.nl Syed Omer Husain will defend his PhD-thesis ‘(De)coding a technopolity: Tethering the civic blockchain to political transformation‘. See the abstract below. The full thesis can be downloaded from WUR Library after the defence ceremony. The ceremony will be live-streamed by Weblectures.wur.nl but is recorded and can be viewed […]
This blog was written by: Kristof Van Assche, Raoul Beunen, Monica Gruezmacher and Martijn Duineveld The global pandemic has frustrated many research projects and many scholars are in doubt about how to move forwards with their research. We cannot provide a solution, but perhaps shaking up the research mantra a bit, could help those scholars […]
Perhaps a useful for some of us: ‘Isolation measures to contain the spread of COVID-19 means that social researchers who have for doing fieldwork in a pandemic – specifically, ideas for avoiding in-person interactions by using mediated forms that will achieve similar ends. Social research has been conducted online for many years, of course. There […]
What would a healthy, generative Higher Education system look like? That’s the question we explore in the 4th session of our U.lab 2x project “Building Vertical Literacy in Higher Education” on May 6th, 2020. Using a method called ‘Social Presencing Theatre’ (SPT), we embodied various stakeholder roles to sense what the system feels like […]
The PhD course Critical Perspectives on Social Theory gives participants an opportunity to intensively engage with some of the major foundational movements in critical social theory, so that they can continue to explore contemporary expansions of those movements in their own research. It is organized as an intensive discussion seminar over the course of four […]
As all of us watch, experience and manage the challenges and opportunities of these days, we are also forced to be lone warriors in self-quarantining and virtualising many private and academic aspects of life… Therefore, CSPS started a drawing challenge as an alternative way of giving our eyes a break and our brain a calming […]
** Special online discussion on rural-urban relations** by Bettina Bock and Jessica Duncansource cover photo: Daily Mail How are the interactions and dependencies between rural, peri-urban and urban areas changing at this moment? Let us know! Comment at #ROBUST #RuralUrban The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the foundation of our societies, painfully demonstrating the enormous difference […]
Teken hier de petitie. – Nederlandse versie manifest (pdf)– English version manifesto (pdf)– Tweet met aankondiging van deze petitie COVID-19 doet de wereld op haar grondvesten schudden. De coronapandemie heeft nu al talloze levens gekost en ontwricht terwijl hulpverleners keihard werken om zieken te verzorgen en verdere verspreiding te voorkomen. De strijd om de enorme […]
Today (10 April) I made my debut in the Dutch newspapers along with colleagues from Wageningen University and Breda University of Applied Sciences. The article was published in the online edition of the Volkskrant (see here), but a synopsis of it appeared in the printed version. The frontpage headline of the print edition was however quite […]