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Global Challenges and Social Justice

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Events

May 16

GCSJ roundtable: Disengaged or discerning sceptics? Research and insights on active citizenship

Friday, May 16, 2025 - 12:00 to 13:00

Online

This roundtable will showcase current research from across the OU focused on engaging disengaged citizens across various contexts.

 

May 23

Leveraging SKEEP for equitable responses to addressing societal challenges

Friday, May 23, 2025 - 12:00 to 13:30

Online, via Microsoft Teams

In this presentation Margaret Ebubedik, Research Fellow in Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies (WELS), will draw on her body of work to share insights into her Stakeholder Knowledge Exchange, Engagement, and Partnerships (SKEEP) approach, which she has applied across diverse humanitarian, peacebuilding, and development contexts. 

This event is part of the Thinking Expansively Seminar Series (TESS).

Jun 3

Reimagining disengagement: tools and resources for engaging the disengaged in making change

Tuesday, June 3, 2025 - 12:00 to 13:30

Online, via Microsoft

Political disengagement is rising in the UK, with declining turnout, eroding trust, and growing polarisation. Some groups, particularly young people and the economically disadvantaged, are especially disengaged. Join us for this online event, to get some practical insights into methods of engaging the disengaged in making change in politics, democracy and civil society, specifically aimed at policy makers and campaigning organisations. Find out about our FREE toolkit and how you can use it.

Jun 4

3rd Annual GCSJ Research Festival on Challenging Power

Wednesday, June 4, 2025 - 10:00 to Friday, June 6, 2025 - 13:00

Online & In person (The Open University campus, Library Seminar room 4 & 5)

We would like to invite you to join the GCSJ Research Festival on Challenging Power. The festival will bring together a variety of speakers and formats to showcase exciting OU research and give researchers a platform to exchange ideas and expand their networks.

Jun 18

Challenging prejudice and disinformation

Wednesday, June 18, 2025 - 13:00 to 14:30

Online

As part of this roundtable discussion, members of three research teams will reflect on how external engagement and research impact can creatively, effectively and ethically be facilitated to challenge prejudice and disinformation. 

Past Events

"Surviving Storms" - A talk with Dr Adom Philogene Heron (A TESS Talk)

25th April 2025

Part of the Thinking Expansively Seminar Series (TESS), this talk welcomes Dr Adom Philogene Heron (Lecturer in Visual Anthropology at the University of Bristol)

From 2019-2023 Adom successfully spearheaded the GCRF Surviving Storms project, digitally mapping hurricane survivals in Dominica. This paper tells a story of a community self help project by villagers displaced from their homes in the aftermath of fatal landslides brought by Tropical Storm Erika in 2015.

GCSJ seminar series: Existential Dis/Connections: Opening up conversations

11th April 2025

In this seminar we will introduce the developing work of Existential Dis/Connections. The seminar will offer tasters for making connections from a number of different starting points, opening up conversations and encouraging new spaces that can accommodate discomfort, uncertainty and new possibilities.

How should academics engage with policy-makers to create impact?

4th April 2025

Join us for a talk by Rajiv Prabhakar, Senior Lecturer in Personal Finance. Rajiv will be drawing on his experience of engaging with the UK Parliament to the ways that researchers might engage with policy makers more generally to crate impacts. 

Book Launch: Remembering, Resisting: Realities of peoples' struggles under Marcos Jr.

24th March 2025

Hosted by the Centre for Global Challenges and Social Justice (GCSJ), join us for a book presentation and discussion with the writers, editors and organisers of the new edited volume.

‘I do not sleep to dream, but dream to change the world’: Black Dreaming in ‘the Wake’; Reflections on Futures Past – A TESS Talk

21st March 2025

This event is part of the Thinking Expansively Seminar Series (TESS) and will explore Blackness, futurity, and geographies, drawing on Christina Sharpe's concept of "the wake." It examines how dreams and joy within Blackness inform new visions of the future, using Caribbean literature and film to reimagine Black futures. Through works like Erna Brodber's One Bubby Susan and Jaz Morrison’s films, the talk challenges traditional ideas of time and Black experience.

Wrongs not righted: how might we think about repair? - A GCSJ Research Talk

18th March 2025

This talk explores the troubling history of the entanglements between Britain and Jamaica, through the establishment of a slave society from the late seventeenth century, the time of abolition and emancipation, and moments of crisis in 1865 and 1938. It will argue that there are colonial wrongs to be righted: there is a debt. Who carries responsibility? What would recognition mean? How might we think about repair?

GCSJ seminar series: Overcoming colonial continuities in the area of social protection

14th March 2025

Drawing on documentary analysis and stakeholder interviews, the talk offers a critical, comparative analysis of how colonial pasts have influenced social protection policies and institutions in Mainland Tanzania and Cote d’Ivoire, to what extent the current dynamics of policymaking enable alignment with national social protection priorities, and how domestic leadership in social protection arrangements could be strengthened.

Teaching equitably about climate change: Linking Higher Education research with School teaching?

12th March 2025

Hosted by the Centre for Global Challenges and Social Justice (GCSJ), join us for a discussion with the developers of new teaching materials for Key Stage 3 to address the climate crisis through a decolonial lens

AI Opportunities? Responses on implications for research and teaching

5th March 2025

This is the second roundtable of the 2024-2025 GCSJ Roundtable series. This roundtable invites an open and critical exploration of the concerns, questions and opportunities regarding the use of AI within teaching and learning. 

An Integrated System for Refugee Students: Access and Success in Higher Education - A TESS Talk

21st February 2025

This event is part of the Thinking Expansively Seminar Series (TESS) and examines how digital education can empower refugee learners by addressing the unique challenges they face in accessing and succeeding in higher education. It explores the development of an integrated framework that provides tailored, multi-tiered support systems in host countries, moving beyond generic approaches to meet the specific needs of refugee students.