Implications of Situated Solidarity Building for Rethinking the Geopolitics of Higher Education
- Emily Dobrich, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
With an emphasis on border crossing, bridging divides and fostering more ethical and meaningful partnerships at all levels, situated solidarity building holds significance for expanding conversations on rethinking the geopolitics of higher education. To build situated solidarities, researchers must explore how geographical, political, and socio-institutional factors impact context and relationships through reflexivity (Nagar & Geiger, 2007). By engaging in situated solidarity building, researchers have the potential to disrupt traditional hierarchies of knowledge production and reshape academic fields through collaborative knowledge creation with research participants (Nagar, 2014).
The objective of this webinar is to identify and analyze processes that support the formation of situated solidarities. This analysis is based on findings from the fieldwork of a community development research project with diasporic women which used situated solidarity building to explore issues pertaining to life as an immigrant and immigrants’ knowledge of Indigenous peoples and reconciliation in Canada. This webinar will delve into the formation of situated solidarities in the research project and examine their outcomes and implications. The discussion will cover lessons learned, challenges faced, and key recommendations for the future development of research, partnerships, and initiatives between academia and the community.
References
Nagar, R. (2014). Reflexivity, positionality, and languages of collaboration in feminist fieldwork. In Muddying the waters: Co-authoring feminisms across scholarship and activism (pp. 81-104). University of Illinois Press
Nagar, R., & Geiger, S. (2007). Reflexivity, positionality and identity in feminist fieldwork revisited. In A. Tickell, E. Sheppard, J. Peck, & T. Barnes (Eds.), Politics and practice in economic geography (pp. 267-278). Sage.
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Emily Dobrich is a graduate of the University of British Columbia’s Intercontinental Master of Education in Adult Learning and Global Change program. She is presently a Doctoral Candidate in the Adult Education and Community Development program with the Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) located at the University of Toronto. In conjunction with her doctoral degree, she has done collaborative specializations in Comparative, International, and Development Education; Women and Gender Studies; and Diaspora and Transnational Studies. Emily’s doctoral research explores how embodied learning practices and pedagogies support situated solidarity building and self-determination for decolonization, community building and collective action with migrant and diasporic populations. In 2022, Emily received a Congress Graduate Merit Award from the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. She is also the 2023 winner of the Alan Thomas Graduate Student paper award from the Canadian Association for Studies in Adult Education (CASAE) and recipient of the Student Leadership Award from the Canadian Association of College and University Student Services (CACUSS).
