How does innovation affect income inequality? This talk explores how innovation systems can both increase and reduce inequality. It challenges the conventional explanations offered by mainstream economics - such as the skill-biased technological change account - and highlights the critical role of the mechanisms and strategies adopted by key actors in innovation systems.
Hosted by the Centre for Global Challenges and Social Justice (GCSJ), join us on Monday 9th February, 12:00 – 13:00 online for the book presentation and discussion with Renu Bhandari, Senior Lecturer, Staff Tutor and Chair of Access Board of Studies at the Open University at her book launch.
Dr Rita Gayle (University of Birmingham) explores her research on millennial Black British women’s creative collectives (2013–2020), using Stuart Hall’s conjunctural analysis to examine their legacy. She also reflects on Black Studies in Britain and how knowledge about African and Caribbean heritage communities is produced and shared.
Thinking Expansively Seminar Series (TESS) offers ways of thinking that start from elsewhere/margins in a way that unsettles and reconfigures knowledge. It starts from beyond the canon. Thinking Expansively redefines how we approach knowledge, pushing us to imagine and realise a more equitable and inhabitable world. TESS is an interdisciplinary series hosted by GCSJ at the Open University.
This volume explores the international relations of today's Middle East. The tumult following the Arab Uprisings has expanded the arenas competed over by regional powers, global actors and non-state players. As global politics moves towards a new, multipolar era, this volume sheds important light on how this transition will impact on the region. Comprised of two macro sections that offer theoretical reflections and empirical case studies, this volume is essential reading for scholars of the politics and international relations of the Middle East.
After researching sex workers in Cape Town and the UK there seems to be a desperate need for the safeguarding of sex worker.
Drawing upon his recent book Crude Capitalism (Verso 2024), Adam Hanieh explores the growing role of the six Gulf Arab states (Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman) in solar, wind, and other climate technologies that underpin dominant approaches to the 'Green Transition'.
This session explores the limitations of conventional learning-centred leadership models and introduces a transformative Afrocentric approach rooted in African cultural values and epistemologies. Drawing on emerging research, it presents five foundational principles: culturally grounded pedagogy, Ubuntu-inspired inclusivity, liberatory learning spaces, decolonial data praxis, and relational empowerment.
In this talk, we discuss what it might mean to keep thinking with Doreen Massey today. As a profoundly influential geographer based at the Open University for many decades, our aim is not a retrospective focused on Massey as an individual academic figure.
Dr. Tareeq Jalloh (Oxford) will give a talk, arguing against censoring drill on the assuption that it causes violence.
This theme is being pursued by the OU Palestine Solidarity Group within the OU’s Open Societal Challenge programme. Our Challenge aims to de-exceptionalise Israel/Palestine through research, education, partnerships with other university Palestine solidarity groups and national campaigns to build a transdisciplinary decolonisation research programme.
