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Being in Shadow and Light: Academics in Post/Conflict Higher Education

Metadata
TitleBeing in Shadow and Light
SubtitleAcademics in Post/Conflict Higher Education
ContributorDina Zoe Belluigi(editor)
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0427
Landing pagehttps://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/OBP.0427
Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
CopyrightDina Zoe Belluigi. Copyright of individual chapters are maintained by the chapter author(s).
PublisherOpen Book Publishers
Publication placeCambridge, UK
Published on2025-01-06
ISBN978-1-80511-404-8 (Paperback)
978-1-80511-405-5 (Hardback)
978-1-80511-406-2 (PDF)
978-1-80511-408-6 (HTML)
978-1-80511-407-9 (EPUB)
Short abstractAcademia and its citizens, during periods of political violence and social conflict, are often overlooked. When attention is given, the focus tends to be on student activism, access to higher education, or curriculum development. The experiences of academics affected by conflict remain under-researched, despite the crucial role they play as educators and in generating, documenting, preserving and challenging knowledges. This is particularly concerning given that academics have−and continue to be−at risk as targets of sanction, persecution and oppression.
Long abstractAcademia and its citizens, during periods of political violence and social conflict, are often overlooked. When attention is given, the focus tends to be on student activism, access to higher education, or curriculum development. The experiences of academics affected by conflict remain under-researched, despite the crucial role they play as educators and in generating, documenting, preserving and challenging knowledges. This is particularly concerning given that academics have−and continue to be−at risk as targets of sanction, persecution and oppression. This edited volume seeks to address this gap by exploring, and evoking, the complexities of academic subjectivity, place and practice in contexts where intellectual and state authority are contested or in transition. It features contributions by academics, artists and memory activists who have stepped bravely outside of the parameters of their disciplines, with modes of enquiry and representation that include conversations, vignettes and case studies, critical ethnographies, oral life histories, interviews, poetry and collage. Within the ten chapters are consideration of conflicts within Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, England, Mexico, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, Palestine, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Syria and Venezuela. Being in Shadow and Light encourages a deeper understanding of academics’ navigation of these difficult conditions. The authors’ insider-outsider positioning brings forth the richness of ways through dilemmas−of omission, trauma, displacement, inheritance, injustice, distortion, desire. Grounding the many social, cultural, economic, and epistemic politics within academia, troubles the enclosure of ‘conflict’ in politics at the grand level, as if only within the realm of interest for state and international actors. Against sanitising the uncertainties and particularities of being an academic figure, the authors reflect on the states and sites of conflict as spaces which shape living. This work is a call to recognize, document and study the often-overlooked subjectivities and contributions of academics thinking and practicing within societies undergoing conflict(s) and in their aftermath. As such, it will be of interest to academics, students and staff working within universities, as well audiences interested in intellectuals and institutions in contexts undergoing change.
Print length372 pages (xx+352)
LanguageEnglish (Original)
Dimensions156 x 26 x 234 mm | 6.14" x 1.02" x 9.21" (Paperback)
156 x 30 x 234 mm | 6.14" x 1.18" x 9.21" (Hardback)
Weight706g | 24.90oz (Paperback)
886g | 31.25oz (Hardback)
Media18 illustrations
3 tables
OCLC Number1483748831
LCCN2023513463
BIC
  • JNM
  • JNF
  • NHTX
  • GTU
  • JBS
  • JBFG
BISAC
  • EDU015000
  • EDU034000
  • SOC051000
  • SOC066000
  • POL034000
  • HIS054000
LCC
  • LC72
Keywords
  • Academia in conflict
  • Academic identity
  • Political violence and education
  • Academic freedom
  • Post-conflict reconstruction
  • Higher education and social change
Contents

Foreword

(pp. xix–xx)
  • Takyiwaa Manuh

Introduction : Evoking What It Is to Be in Shadow and Light

(pp. 1–22)
  • Dina Zoe Belluigi

1.Truth and Reparations: A Conversation on the Participation of the Higher Education Sector in the Colombian Commission for the Clarification of Truth, Coexistence and Non-repetition

(pp. 25–55)
  • Natalia Maya Llano
  • Juan Camilo Domínguez Cardona
  • Juan Sebastián Flórez Herrera
  • Catalina Puerta Henao
  • Adriana Rudling

2.The Whiteboard: Reflections on a Personal Archive of Apartheid-era Items from the Security Police of a University Town

(pp. 57–89)
  • Brent Arthur Meistre

3. Academics of Post-war Sri Lanka: Traces of Experiences and Impact

(pp. 91–124)
  • Hemalatha Pradeepkumar

4. Being a Woman and a Researcher between Exile and Social Reconfiguration: An Interview with Hebe Vessuri

(pp. 125–159)
  • Nissa Yaing Torres Soto
  • María Alejandra Aray Roa
  • Guillermo López Franco
  • Paulette Joseph

5. Hidden Legacies of the Troubles: Post-conflict Pedagogy as Resistance in Northern Irish Medical Education

(pp. 161–190)
  • Helen Reid
  • Jenny Johnston
  • Mairead Corrigan

6. ‘A Virtual Target Painted on my Back…’: Contested Constitutionalism in a Post-conflict Society

(pp. 193–216)
  • Colin Harvey

7. (Her)story between Shadow and Light: A Displaced Syrian Woman Academic

(pp. 217–240)
  • Rida Anis

8. Home and Abroad: Exploring my Lived Experiences through Poetry and Narrative

(pp. 241–261)
  • Fadel Jobran-Alsawayfa

9. The Lone Voice in the Academic Wildernes: Nigerian Academics’ Experiences in Industrial Conflicts

(pp. 263–286)
  • Gregory Obinna Ugbo
  • Henry Chigozie Duru

10. The Conflict of the Faculties, Again

(pp. 287–337)
  • Richard Hudson-Miles
Locations
PaperbackLanding pageFull text URLPublisher Website
HardbackLanding pageFull text URLPublisher Website
PDFLanding pageFull text URLPublisher Website
Landing pageFull text URLOAPEN
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Landing pageFull text URLINTERNET ARCHIVE
HTMLLanding pageFull text URLPublisher Website
EPUBLanding pageFull text URLPublisher Website
Contributors

Dina Zoe Belluigi

(editor)
Professor of Authorship, Representation and Transformation in Academia at Queen's University Belfast
Fellow of the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice at Queen's University Belfast
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4005-0160
https://pure.qub.ac.uk/en/persons/dina-belluigi

Dina Zoe Belluigi is Professor of Authorship, Representation and Transformation in Academia and a Fellow of the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice at Queen’s University Belfast (Northern Ireland). She is a Visiting Professor at the Chair for the Critical Studies of Higher Education Transformation at Nelson Mandela University (South Africa). Her scholarship and practice revolve around comprehending oppression and inequalities within, and by, the university, and the ways in which these are negotiated by intellectuals (specifically academics and artists) of the Majority World. She is fortunate to have learnt from collaborations—particularly in South Africa, India and Northern Ireland—utilising a range of research methodologies, including the creative arts. She was also fortunate to have her intellectual formation—as an academic and artist—informed by commitments to transformative justice prevalent in post-Apartheid South Africa. Dina serves in editorial roles of journals and councils of learned societies in Higher Education Studies, the Social Sciences and Humanities, and Creative Arts Education. She contributes to the work of the Scholars at Risk Ireland Committee, as she did the Council for At-Risk Academics (UK) Syrian programme. She is co-editor of Emancipatory Imaginations: Advancing Critical University Studies (African Sun Media, 2024 [in press]).

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