Teaching and learning in a world on fire – CRITIQUE-PTRG Seminar (29th Oct)
Wednesday 29th October 2025, 3-4:30pm
Medical School, Teviot – G.03, Doorway 6
Seminar
CRITIQUE and the Political Theory Research Group are holding a joint seminar with guest Prof. John Barry (Queen’s University, Belfast). This will be a (pre-read) discussion of his paper “Teaching and learning in a world on fire: Academia, activism and the planetary crisis”.
Abstract
If we are in a planetary crisis (as all scientific evidence suggests), why do we not witness academia and academics acting as if it is a crisis? How do we explain and understand how and why we, as academics and academic institutions, continue with a more of less ‘business as usual’ approach? What would academic work across teaching, research, outreach and engagement look like if our profession was to rise to the challenge and opportunity of addressing the planetary and related socio-economic and socio-ecological crises we face?
This paper is a personal reflection on how academia should transform itself, indeed remake and reimagine itself in the context of the Anthropocene/Capitalocene, and the intersections of the climate and biodiversity crisis with growing inequality and injustice within and between societies. What is our responsibility as trusted sources of knowledge production and dissemination? Should we become more activist oriented and more engaged in informing the public about the causes, consequences and solutions to our worsening predicament as groups like Extinction Rebellion, Faculty for Future and the Climate Justice Universities Union suggest? How do we transform academia starting from the difficult assessment that as current constituted universities play a key role in the reproduction of unsustainability? As highly resourced and influential institutions, universities have an inherently transformative potential, should those resources be redirected and redistributed to progressive social and ecological ends that challenge, rather than support, our unsustainable political and economic status quo. As workers within these institutions, academics and researchers are therefore faced with a choice: to be agents of this reproduction or to be advocates and activists for radical transformation and change.