Fighting for e/quality: Comparative ethnographies of new student movements

Anthropologists of higher education are comparatively rare birds, but their ethnographic insights are always worth listening out for. Gritt Nielsen’s talk to the CGHE on 22 October was no exception. Based at the Danish School of Education, Gritt knows the Danish system intimately, having done her PhD research on student involvement in university reforms (2015). At this hybrid webinar, Gritt presented insights from an ambitious research project into student activism in three countries.

Initially set up as a comparative project comparing Berkeley, Copenhagen and Goldsmiths, Gritt described how the three members of the research team inevitably drew on their own unique positionalities to develop rich accounts of very different forms of student activism. Calling these ‘circumstantial ethnographies’, she pointed to the limits of neat analytical comparisons of different higher education systems, as well as the inevitable challenge of defining and delimiting activism itself.

In her own ethnography of what she called the ‘everyday activism’ of Danish students in Copenhagen, Gritt attended to the way that students began questioning ‘traditional’ student induction week events and games. Suddenly, dressing up in national costumes no longer seemed appropriate, given that it risked cultural appropriation and the perpetuation of stereotypes. These debates quickly scaled out beyond the university, with what initially seemed like ‘local’ issues becoming a source of heated national debate, as conservative Danish politicians responded with attacks on ‘woke’ Danish universities.

Gritt thoughtfully reflected on the ‘interconnected movements’ of both activism and political reaction across the Atlantic, and the ways this nurtured translocal awareness. Students responded to this politicisation by invoking a sense of moral community and global cosmopolitanism. Gritt’s careful attention to the unfolding of her emotionally, politically and morally charged fieldwork made for a gripping talk.

After the talk a rich conversation ensued, both online and face to face, about different forms of student activism, both aimed at   the university and those with a broader societal remit. Whilst this webinar was unfortunately not recorded due to a technical glitch, the slides capture the richness of Gritt’s presentation, and we look forward to reading more about this work.

Access the webinar slides here.

References

Nielsen, Gritt B. Figuration work: Student participation, democracy and university reform in a global knowledge economy. Vol. 27. Berghahn Books, 2015.