WS: Making Diversity Real?: Navigating Between Academia and Activism in German and International Context
Organised by the GCSC Equal Opportunities Committee
- https://www.uni-giessen.de/en/faculties/ggkgcsc/ggk-gcsc-calendar/sose25/etrg/making-diversity-real-international
- WS: Making Diversity Real?: Navigating Between Academia and Activism in German and International Context
- 2025-07-10T13:30:00+02:00
- 2025-07-10T16:00:00+02:00
- Organised by the GCSC Equal Opportunities Committee
The relationship between activism and academic research is often as exciting as it is dangerous. While scholarship frequently critically engages with movements for social justice, institutional structures often constrain the political reach of academic work, if they don’t unable it directly. In Germany, where higher education is shaped by a complex mixture of state policy, marketization, and traditional academic hierarchies, scholars working at the intersection of activism and research face many challenges. This is particularly true for early career scholars. This workshop seeks to explore how activist practices influence academic methodologies, shape epistemologies, and offer new venues for scholarship anchored directly in the real world. With this workshop, we will examine how knowledge production can be made more accountable to social movements and the communities they seek to represent.
For decades, activist scholarship has played a crucial role in undermining hegemonic knowledge systems inherited by academia over the last centuries. This is being done particularly in the fields of intersectional feminism, queer studies, and critical race theory. In the German academic context, however, these perspectives often remain marginalized, with institutional structures promoting a commodification of diversity rather than a substantive transformation of epistemic and material inequalities. Researchers working on social justice issues—such as global inequalities, queer movements, and anti-discrimination—often navigate a fine line between academic legitimacy and activist engagement. This is particularly true for scholars who seek engagement in politically charged issues. This workshop will interrogate the extent to which universities enable or hinder political activism and politically engaged scholarship and discuss the expectations and limitations put upon scholars.
How can researchers avoid the extractivist tendencies of academic knowledge production when engaging with activist movements? What institutional strategies can support scholars working at the intersection of research and activism? How can academia be reimagined as a site of resistance rather than merely a space of intellectual debate?
//Prof. Dr. Christine M. Klapeer and Tarek Shukrallah (Justus Liebig University, Giessen)
