Youth Activism in Educational Spaces

Start date: 9 January 2023
End date: 31 July 2023
Funder: Leeds Social Sciences Institute
Value: £6,000
Partners and collaborators: University of Leeds and The University of Buenos Aires
Primary investigator: Dr Madeleine Le Bourdon
Co-investigators: Dr Alba Griffin, Dr Peter Watson
External co-investigators: Dr. Emilio Ayos, Dr. Pablo Francisco Di Leo, Dr. Martín Unzué, Dr. Pablo Vommaro, Dr Kimberly Sheen, Dr. Melina Vázquez.

The project, funded by the LSSI, establishes a collaborative partnership between the Univerity of Leeds and Universidad de Buenos Aries to build a network of researchers working on Youth Activism in Educational Spaces. Bringing together expertise across multiple disciplines the project will build an opportunity for reciprocal learning from research in formal, non-formal and informal educative spaces across the UK and Argentina.

The aims of this research are rooted in the works of Paulo Freire and bell hooks. Looking within and beyond structured learning setting, the project looks to sites of activism in the everyday for emancipatory education and ‘action-reflective-transformative’ pedagogy which centres on the learners’ experiential journey (Freire 1975:15).

In recognising the classroom as ‘the most radical spaces of possibility in the academy’ (bell hooks 1994), we wish to draw on these learnings across educational and activists spaces to cut through the growing constraints on our teaching in higher education.

V Latin American and Caribbean Biennial in Early Childhood, Childhood and Youth, Caldas Colombia in July 2023; Online Open Seminar Series (tbc).

Impact

The project will centre on creating an international network of researchers working on Youth Activism in educational spaces:

Establish an international network of researchers and practitioners working on the intersections between youth activism and educational spaces.
Provide opportunity for sharing knowledge and expertise on youth activism in educational spaces through workshops, conferences and special issue publications.
Work on collaborative research proposal for the UKRI Interdisciplinary research scheme looking at the role of street art activism as a space for informal learning for global challenges across the UK and Argentina.