CHEF Talk: Experiments in Decolonizing the University. Towards an Ecology of Study

The aim of this talk is to reconsider the relation between university and society from the point of view of the practices of study that inhabit the university. Drawing on the work of Isabelle Stengers, Donna Haraway, Alfred North Whitehead, and John Dewey, and taking inspiration from the Palestinian decolonial, experimental university ‘Campus in Camps’, Dr Hans Schildermans develops the concept of an ecology of study to approach the relation between university and society from a new angle. The ecology of study omits the pleas for more freedom and autonomy on the one hand, and the attempts to instrumentalize the university for societal needs on the other hand. Instead, Dr Hans Schildermans argues that experimenting with study practices that always inhabit the university opens up sites of resistance against current neoliberal and capitalist reforms of the university, and places to envisage different futures for the university as an ecology of study that is always already there, always to be reclaimed.