Activist knowledge
exists in a creative tension with other forms of knowledge. Much of the best
contemporary social movements research is engaged research – work by activist
participants and / or work which is designed to support and develop movement
thinking, and CEESA staff and students benefit from this in many ways.
In November CEESA
staff and activist postgrads in Sociology organised the first social movements conference in Ireland for well over a decade, with 20 papers spanning everything from Rossport
to the Arab Spring, working-class community education to the World Social Forum
and SlutWalks to children’s rights.
This March the Council
for European Studies’ Social Movements Research Network (co-chaired by CEESA staff) is hosting a joint event with
Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society looking at the
relationships between the Arab Revolutions, anti-austerity movements in Europe and the Occupy! phenomenon. This event brings together 30 leading researchers
on these different movements (including people from Occupy Research, Boston College's Movements / media Research and Action Project, MIT Comparative Media, etc.) to explore this dramatic period in world history.
Early next month CEESA
students and staff as well as activist postgrads in Sociology will be taking
part in the “Alternative Futures and Popular Protest” conference, the annual
social movements conference in these islands (now in its 17th year).
This conference is a fundamental space for sharing knowledge between engaged
researchers working on social movements and counter-cultural projects of all
kinds.
Finally, in May the international
social movements journal Interface,
based at NUI Maynooth, brings out its 7th issue on the linked topics
of the Arab Spring and European anti-austerity movements. At time of writing
independent journalist Austin Mackell, his translator Ailya Alwi and US
postgrad Derek Ludovici are barred from leaving Egypt and facing trumped-up
charges carrying up to 7 years’ imprisonment linked to their attempt to
interview an Egyptian labour leader.
Each year CEESA
students design and carry out their own research projects, designed as
practitioner theses aimed at supporting and developing their own movements’
practice in a particular area. In doing this they are supported by these broader
links and networks of engaged research at what has become not only Ireland’s
leading centre of social movement studies but a key node in cutting-edge
international research in this area.
