*** Apologies for Cross-Posting ***

Dear all,

Sorry about cross-posting. I would like to invite you to our fringe meeting to celebrate Refugee Week 2017 on Monday the 19th June at Refugee Archive in University of East London. Please find details attached. 

It is a free to attend event, and we would like to plan an action through brainstorming on "education beyond borders". You can book your place on Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/educating-without-borders-a-fringe-event-in-refugee-week-2017-tickets-34974671183

We are also on Facebook. Please visit:  https://www.facebook.com/events/133131803914060/?acontext=%7B%22ref%22%3A%22106%22%2C%22action_history%22%3A%22null%22%7D

It would be great if you can join us. Please come with your friends and share this event with your network and activists. If can tweet please use hashtag #ASFBeyondBorder and #RefugeeWeek2017

Thanks and best wishes,

Paul


Activism in Sociology Forum 

Education Beyond Borders: Resisting Immobilities and Intellectual Impossibility in Universities in Post-Brexit-Vote Britain and Beyond
A Fringe Event in Refugee Week 2017
Monday 19th June, 2017
1400 – 1800
Refugee Research Archive and Room EB.G. 10
University of East London, Docklands Campus. London

Booking: Via Eventbrite https://www.eventbrite.com/e/educating-without-borders-a-fringe-event-in-refugee-week-2017-tickets-34974671183 

We are delighted to invite you and your organisation to a fringe event to celebrate Refugee Week 2017 and to discuss ways to resist educational immobilities in and beyond British universities. The event is co-organised by the Activism in Sociology Forum (ASF) of British Sociological Association, the Refugee Research Archive at University of East London (UEL) and the Oral History Society Migration Special Interest Group. It will be held on Monday 19th June alongside the showcasing of the exhibition of photographs by Bill Knight entitled “The Refugee's Gift”, as part of supporting Refugee Week activities. 

Co-hosted by the Refugee Research Archive and OLIve students and staff at UEL, the meeting will build on a previous fringe event of ASF held in Birmingham in 2016. It will be combined with short provocations by activists, migrant rights advocates, refugee scholars and students leading on to a workshop on access to education and resisting educational immobilities in higher education. Our starting point is where we have ended in 2016, before Brexit, at the second ASF fringe meeting which was held at British Sociological Association’s annual conference in Birmingham. What we see to be the difficulty of accessing education and producing intellectual – especially critical and political – work in British universities and elsewhere. It was previously highlighted how the fact that universities have dominated the post-16 education landscape for some time means that a cooperative university would have a long way to go to become comprehensive. At the end of the dialogical and interactive discussion, participants had left the meeting room with an urge to continue that dialogue. The aim of the to be held event is to think about and share ideas and practices on what is to be done about access to education, especially regarding asylum seekers and refugees, in post-Brexit Britain and elsewhere. 

Questions for provocation include but not limited to: 

How do we ensure the widest possible participation in our universities and intellectual practices in a time rising nationalism? 

Is radical praxis enough for accessing education and resisting intellectual immobilities within and outside universities? What actions and praxis are necessary to resist educational immobilities within universities? 

We also search for answers to questions such as how do students engage with social transformation and be active in promoting social change that is attentive to inequalities of class, ethnicity, gender, race and sexuality and aligned with struggles to confront and eliminate them? How do we achieve an inclusive and diversified and empowering education given the fact that contemporary political frictions and the rise of right wing politics in the UK, in Europe and elsewhere point to an increasingly divisive society? How long way to go for a ‘cooperative’ university to become comprehensive? 

The event will start with three brief provocations leading to small group discussion and roundtable with activists and OLIve students. Provocators include: 
Aura Lounasmaa – programme co-ordinator of UEL-OLIve and co-author of Voices from the Jungle. 
Mama D Ujuaje – activist and Founder of Community Centred Knowledge. 
Timothy Hall – community activist and a lecturer in Politics, University of East London. Activism in Sociology Forum 
Tom Vickers – public sociologist in Nottingham Trent University and author of Refugees, Capitalism and the British State: Implications for social workers, volunteers and activists. 
Our aim is to attract an equal share of activists, academics, community advocates, refugee and migrants’ rights experts, students and scholars of forced-migration and refugee research, and friends and people in struggle for borderless education or immobilities in universities in and outside post-Brexit Britain. 

The discussion will be followed by a showcasing of the exhibition of photographs by Bill Knight entitled “The Refugee's Gift.” Originally created as a free exhibition for the Refugee Council, the Refugee's Gift “shows refugees and the contribution they make to life in the United Kingdom. Here are people who have escaped from persecution and who have benefited from our long tradition of offering asylum. They may have arrived recently from conflicts in Syria, Eritrea, or Somalia, or sought safety decades ago from Hitler’s Germany. Men and women, young and old, rich and poor, most arrived with few material possessions – but they all came with an unstoppable determination to make a new life.” (Refugee Council, The Refugee’s Gift). 
Light refreshments will be served during the event. 

This is an open event for ALL and free to attend. BUT RSVP is needed for refreshments. Booking can be made via Eventbrite page. Please RSVP at: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/educating-without-borders-a-fringe-event-in-refugee-week-2017-tickets-34974671183 

For further information, feel free to contact the conference organisers: Paul Dudman at Refugee Research Archive ([log in to unmask]) or Rumana Hashem at BSA-Activism in Sociology Forum ([log in to unmask]).


Paul Dudman BA (Hons.) MScEcon. MCLIP
Archivist
Library & Learning Service: Archives
Library and Learning Centre
University of East London
Email: [log in to unmask]
Web: www.uel.ac.uk/Discover/Library/Library-archive 

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