Learning to Navigate the University in Crisis

In the context of the global emergencies of climate change, the aftermath of COVID-19, the rise of illiberal populism, ongoing geo-political conflict and war, forced migrancy and global inequality, Learning to Navigate the University in Crisis: From Aotearoa to Zeeland maps the university as a site of critical-creative practices that prefigure and rework democratic forms of social life.

The university is further beset by neoliberal managerialism and financialisation, the performance metrics of ranking and algorithms, entrenched hierarchies, workplace inequity and lack of access. Yet the idea of the university as a place that generates social good and inclusive community still makes itself felt in teaching, research, extra-curricular activity and activism that give body to its breathing.

Traversing the settler colony of a new country and the imperial legacy of an old country, Learning to Navigate the University in Crisis excavates the university as a site of study, listens to the ‘play’ of human and non-human agencies, and explores pedagogies of incursion and excursion that break the fourth wall of the institution. It traces global and local currents that animate its residents and publics, and considers how these both deform and reframe what we take ‘study’ to be.

Drawing on critical writing and revisioning of the university, this book sketches the potential of stories and scriptwork that both enjoin and defy the probabalism of GenAI, setting out an associative and non-linear pedagogical practice that escapes the predictive future, and finds hope in futures-past.