3rd Annual GCSJ Research Festival on Challenging Power

10:00-10:15

Welcome and Introduction

10:15-11:30

Session I: Palestine and the Battle of Ideas in the 21st century

Keynote

The past 18 months have perfectly shown how historical distortion through ideological mobilisation becomes a primary weapon for the enablement of Zionist-led and Western backed genocide in Palestine. Western governmental, educational, and media institutions have dug their trenches in the defense and propagation of ideas that tether to the wider social imperative of reproducing Zionism and US-led imperialism. The ruling class of the imperialist core labels Palestinian Resistance acts as “al-Qaeda/ISIS-like terrorists,” or even “Nazi pogrom.” From fabricated stories concerning beheaded and crucified Israeli babies, to the fascist repression and complete ban of pro-Palestinian ‘terrorists’, the collective West has unleashed an ideological war required to justify the material carnage perpetrated by US manufactured-Zionist bombs. As Fidel Castro suggested “Guns follow ideas, and ideas follow guns.” In such a context, the wise and premonitory words of the late Cuban Leader can guide us to understand better the stakes of the current historical moment. First, they help us situate historically the empire’s relentless discourse and wars against ‘Terrorism,’ unveiling racialising/gendering layers of imperialist accumulation via war. Second, they unmask the functionary role of Western intellectual class in producing idealist theorizations and moralistic condemnations whose primary goal is to distract from, as well as undermine, the masses’ engagement with insurgent acts that Palestine ushers for the world. Third, they help identify the social and political syntax underpinning the Palestinian struggle to reclaim history.

Speaker: Dr Walaa Alqaisiya

Dr Walaa Alqaisiya is a distinguished scholar of Middle East Studies at the Northwest University in the People’s Republic of China. Spanning the fields of Indigenous ecologies, gender and sexuality studies, anti-imperialist and decolonial theories, Dr Alqaisiya’s work challenges the complex web of gendered, sexualised, and racialised constituents of the Zionist settler-colonial project whilst envisioning a future for a free Palestine beyond the Oslo historical impasse. She is the recipient of the prestigious Global Marie Curie Fellowship from the European Commission. She has forged and leads several international scientific collaborations, including partnerships across three academic institutions: Ca’ Foscari university in Venice Italy; Columbia University in the City of New York; and the London School of Economics in the UK. Dr Alqaisiya's scholarship is extensively published in peer reviewed international journals, such as Journals of Social and Cultural Geography, Political geography, Radical Philosophy amongst others. Currently, Dr Alqaisiya is spearheading an edited volume, to be published with Routledge this year. This project expands on a special issue focused on the academic question of Palestine, aiming to critically examine and document recent forms of intensified repression and censorship against scholarship, scholars and students working on the question of Palestine across Global North contexts that include Europe, North America, and Oceania.

Chair: Professor Umut Erel

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11:30-11:45

Break

11:45-13:00

Session II: The Migration Group: Unsettling borders

Organised by OU Migration group

This panel brings together researchers from across the Open University whose research looks at migration, borders and bordering from diverse and interdisciplinary perspectives. Centrally this panel explores how ongoing world events, such as climate change, right-wing political transformations, and global war and conflict, shape and re-shape our perception of those who cross them and how borders affect the experiences and wellbeing of those on the move.

Speakers:

Dr Stacey Heath, Dr Neil Graffin: Climate change

Dr Sharon Xuereb: How locals and those from a migration background perceive legal economic migrants, legal refugees, and illegal asylum seekers

Dr Sharif Haider: Decolonising Mental Health: Innovations for Supporting Rohingya Refugees

Chairs: Dr Kathryn Medien and Dr Kate Ritchie

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13:00-13:45

Break

11:45-13:00

Session III: Power and global development

Organised by IKD

Power is widely recognised as one of the most important and debated concepts in global development. Unsurprisingly, the concept of power plays a crucial role in the Innovation, Knowledge and Inclusive Development (IKID) research stream referencing individuals, groups, organisations and states. In much of our research, power structures and relations inform our framing and analysis of key global challenges. We are conscious of how power shapes knowledge production and ownership, how development agendas are set and their impact on policy influence and what research gets funded; issues of representation and voice, impact of research, and how power structures shape social and economic dynamics and outcomes.

In this session, we would like to showcase a range of research studies from colleagues in DPP and Economics that foreground power across different dimensions and scales. How does power feature in your research? How does it shape your analytical approach? What insights are gained by centring power in analysis?

Speakers: Dr Celia Barlett, Dr Merim Baitimbetova, Prof. Giles Mohan, Dr Frangton Chiyemura

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15:00-15:15

Break

15:15-16:30

Session IV: Talking Race: From discomfort to disruptive action in research and teaching

Organised by Racial Justice Working Group

In this session you will be introduced to the work of the RJWG operating out of FASS/SPC.

Speakers: Professor Steve Tombs, Dr Eleni Dimou, Dr Jane McCarthy, Dr Ayobami Ilori, Dr Claire Malcolm

Grenfell, 'race' and racism (Professor Steve Tombs)
'Race' and racism were integral to why the people who were killed in Grenfell tower by the fire on 14 Jue 2017 were in fact in the Tower on that night - and 'race' and racism are equally central to the political responses to the atrocity. Formally excluded from the Terms of Reference of the Public Enquiry, 'race' is central to understanding Grenfell.

 Race and civilisation (Dr Eleni Dimou)
The 18th-century notions of civilisation and race did not emerge in a vacuum; instead, they were constructs shaped by the Enlightenment and imperial ideologies. Continuous dominant discourses on ‘barbarism versus civilisation’ or ‘clash of civilisations’ still permeate global politics, with race mutating into ideas of cultural or ‘civilisational’ difference. Western civilisation is portrayed as homogenous, uniquely democratic and rational, while others are represented as monolithic threats. This binary thinking is used to justify contemporary imperialism, violence and far-reaching harms against those deemed as ‘lesser races’.

Race and racism in and amongst Ex/ Disconnections? (Dr Jane McCarthy)
Often seen as topics too sensitive for personal conversations, the mainstream language, models, and theories of death and its aftermath are deeply embedded in white colonial/modernity to the detriment of all. As a white woman, what can I do towards such conversations, to support open spaces for breaking the silences?

“Experiencing racism?: Silent or be silenced” (Dr Ayobami Ilori)
I will focus on my own experience and highlight some of the experiences of the participants in the OU-BBC2 co-production, which I worked on as an academic consultant.

Dr Claire Malcolm
My co-authored research on the experiences of Black mothers raising autistic children in the UK speaks to the fact that when conversations about race are met with denial and obfuscation, lived experiences of racism are – in turn – overlooked and perpetuated. The continued prevalence of damaging tropes of Black womanhood is key to the barriers that Black mothers face in advocating for their autistic children, and only full and frank discussions about race can expose and problematise this marginalisation.

Chair: Lystra Hagley-Dickinson

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10:00-10:30

Coffee on arrival

10:30-10:50

Welcome and Introductions

11:00-12:00

Keynote Speech: Thinking from the Global South

Today, migration propels the transnationalisation of labour markets, accompanied with the informalization of labour, and precarization of work and citizenship for a globally mobile reserve army of labour. This has facilitated and necessitated the integration of resources and people from different regions into the Global North. In this talk, and in the spirit and theme of this research festival, I argue that we treat migration not only as a process but as a discourse of power, or else it is impossible to understand the highly systematic discipline by which European-Atlantic elites have successfully produced and managed the “migrant.” I contend that this system has successfully generated a concerted political economy of interest in better understanding the experiences of this “other” by dwelling on solution-oriented questions that lead us to discussions about integration, migrant labour rights, migration and development, remittances, encouraging temporary circulatory movements, promoting co-development initiatives and aiding return. Brought together, these repertoires reproduce and sustain hegemonic political relations between the North and the South, where the North not only makes most of the decisions but also ensures that it can respond to its own internal peripheralization at the further expense of the South. I conclude this talk by inviting us to consider what this realisation means for those of us involved in Global North-South partnerships and collaborations.

Speaker: Dr. Kudakwashe Vanyoro (University of Witwatersrand, South Africa)

Dr. Kudakwashe Vanyoro is a distinguished Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, with a keen focus on migration, temporality, borders, humanitarianism, and governance across the African continent. Currently, he is a visiting Research Fellow at the prestigious Centre for African Studies at the University of Cambridge. From 2021 to 2023, Dr. Vanyoro served as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the African Centre for Migration & Society (ACMS), where he contributed significantly to the PROTECT project. His research delved into the intersection of migration and health systems as part of the Wellcome Trust-funded Migration and Health Project Southern Africa (maHp), emphasizing the dynamics of mobility between Zimbabwe and South Africa, as well as addressing critical issues such as medical xenophobia, referral processes, and the harmonization of treatment protocols between the two nations. Dr. Vanyoro's scholarly contributions are well-recognized, with publications in esteemed international peer-reviewed journals, including Gender & Development, Refugee Survey Quarterly, Globalizations, Journal of Southern African Studies, Anthropology Southern Africa, The Lancet, and Incarceration. He is currently in the process of finalizing a monograph set to be published in 2025.

Chair: Gunjan Sondhi

12:00-12:15

Coffee

12:15-13:15

Seminar I: Transability and Transferability of concepts: thinking from India

Organised by OU Migration group

Online speaker: Anindita Datta (online) 

In-person speaker: Professor Parvati Raghuram (The Open University)

13:15-14:15

Lunch (and discussion)

14:15-15:15

Session II: Cancer Patient Voices in Tanzania

Chair: to be confirmed
Online speaker: Richard Ngilangwa
In-person speaker: Dr Cristina Santos (The Open University)

15:15-15:30

Coffee break

15:30-16:30

Seminar III: Indigenous Environmental Knowledge

The Environment: “The natural world or physical surroundings in general, either as a whole or within a particular geographical area, esp. as affected by human activity.” (Oxford English Dictionary)

The global environmental consciousness emerged in the 1970s after the famous Blue Marble photograph taken from the Apollo 17 spacecraft was made public. When looking down from space, the finite limits of Earth struck a chord with the viewer, and ever since then the Blue Marble is associated with a sense of responsibility to look after our finite planet.

Another form of consciousness emerges from the ground up when thinking about Earth through the lived experience. The environmental knowledge of Indigenous peoples around the world arises from their deep engagement with the place, its rocks and rivers, its mountains and meadows, its flora and fauna: knowledge that typically arises from the Global South.

On this World Environment Day 2025, Mary and Shonil will explore ideas, knowledges, perspectives, practices and worldviews from the Global South and ask:

• What can the global environmental consciousness learn from Indigenous environmental knowledges?
• How can thinking about Earth from the Global South help to look after our planet better?
• How can we amplify voices from the Global South for transformative environmental futures?

Online speaker: Mary Ng'endo Kanu is a Transformative Adaptation and Social Equity Implementation Lead at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Nairobi, Kenya. As part of Building Systemic Resilience Against Climate Variability and Extremes (ClimBeR) initiative at IRRI, Mary is championing Indigenous peoples and local community voices of change.

In-person speaker: Professor Shonil Bhagwat is a Professor of Environment and Development at The Open University, UK. As part of the Open Societal Challenges funded CATAPULT project, Shonil is exploring what transformative food futures might look like if Indigenous knowledge about the environment was foregrounded in policies and practices of food production.

16:30-17:30

Networking and refreshments

10:00-11:00

Session I: Showcasing the group’s work

Organised by: Open Ecology group

Speakers: Dr Maria Nita, Professor George Revil

This session will introduce Open Ecologies, an interdisciplinary research group dedicated to exploring environmental change and ecological thinking across time — past, present, and future. By connecting ideas across disciplines, the group bridges the School of Arts and Humanities (A&H), the School of Social Sciences and Global Studies (SSGS), and the Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) at The Open University. With a focus on fostering dialogue and knowledge exchange, Open Ecologies aims to bring academic research into the public sphere. The group organizes informal monthly and bi-monthly meetings, featuring thematic seminars encouraging collaboration among members from diverse fields. The session will explore how this project was shaped by our common research and teaching interests.

Open Ecology group – Film and Impact

Speakers: Dr Carla Benzin, Dr Samuel Shaw

Art and Ecology is an Open Societal Challenges project run by Carla Benzan and Samuel Shaw (Art History). The project aims to change public understanding of today's ecological crisis through the art and visual cultures of the past. Art and Ecology have produced five short films to date, which have been launched via pedal-powered cinema at public-facing workshops across Scotland. In this session Carla and Sam will reflect on the impact achieved by the films so far, and outline plans for the future.

11:00-12:00

Session II: Arts based methods in Social Sciences

Arts-based, participatory methods are popular in social science research. This session reflects on the uses and value of a range of arts-based methods to research migration and to facilitate work with marginalized migrants. It will address the challenges and the opportunities of using arts-based methods for creating and reflecting on shared knowledges.

Speakers: Dr Elena Boukavala, Professor Umut Erel

Chair: to be confirmed

12:00-12:15

Closing of the festival

12:15-13:00

Lunch

13:00-14:30

Future forward session (only for SSGS colleagues)

Chair: Gunjan Sondhi