Talks and podcasts

‘Educators on the edge: flight, resistance and the politics of possibility amongst teachers in managed neoliberal regimes’, University of Brighton, 9 March 2017.

‘University futures’, interview with Corina Bakaban, Universities in the Knowledge Economy project and conference, Aarhus University, Copenhagen, 15–17 June 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0PR8BcB7Fw.

‘Pedagogies of pluriversality’, Universities in the Knowledge Economy conference, University of Copenhagen, 14-17 June 2016.

‘Jacques Rancière and critical pedagogy’, discussant, Coventry University, 20 May 2016.

‘Other learning is possible,’ Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle, Newcastle upon Tyne, 12 May 2016.

‘Possibility-enabling research: methodologies of absence and emergence’, Innovative and Contentious Methodologies, University of Lincoln, 13 April 2016.

‘Learning for a “world in which many worlds fit”‘, Sociology Seminar Series, University of Bath, 30 March 2016.

‘Educating radical democracy? Theorising counter-capitalist possibility in neoliberal social systems,’ University of Warwick, 2 March 2016.

‘Pedagogies of autonomy, self-management and cooperation,’ Marx in the Key of Hope,’ University of Bath, 29 January 2016.

‘Other learnings are possible: autonomous education, decolonization and radical democracy,’ Plymouth Institute of Education Research Seminar Series, 16 December 2015.

‘Neither colonising nor abandoning the future: democratic education in an age of anticipation’ with K. Facer, Anticipation, University of Trento, 4–6 November 2015.

‘Unlearning impossibility: forms and methods of advanced counter-capitalist education,’ Beyond the Neoliberal University: Critical Pedagogy and Activism, Coventry University, 15 September 2015.

‘Critical knowledge and praxis’ with M. Neary and J. Winn, Anglia Ruskin University, 13 May 2015.

‘Learning and organising hope: take your time!’ with A. C. Dinerstein, Utopias, Temporalities and Futures: Critical Considerations for Social Change Symposium, AHRC Connected Communities, Bristol, 19–20 May 2015.

‘Higher education for social justice’, What is to be done in the age of austerity and autonomy? (Conference of Socialist Economists Midlands launch event), University of Birmingham, 17 April 2015.

Students and politics (panel member), Society for Research into Higher Education, 23 January 2015.

‘Theorizing practices of prefiguration: learning to inhabit spaces between past and future’, Re-occupying the Political, University of Newcastle, Australia, 25–26 September 2014.

‘“Either we do this or we die. There is no alternative”: learning from struggles for autonomous higher education’, Universities in the Knowledge Economy, University of Aukland, New Zealand, 10–13 February 2015.

Interactions: an open conversation about socially engaged performance, Federation House, Manchester, 26 November 2014.

‘What do we mean when we say “democracy?” Learning towards a common future with popular higher education’, London Conference in Critical Thought, Goldsmiths College, London, 27–28 June 2014.

‘Theorizing possibilities for change: inside, outside and “venturing beyond” the university’, Academic Activism: Educational Experiments Past and Present, Birmingham City University, 23 June 2014.

‘Practicing possibility: the Lifeboat installation’, LudusThinks Discussion, Hillside Conference Centre, Beeston, UK, 3 April 2014.

‘Imagining alternatives to current directions in higher education’, in dialogue with Léo Charbonneau, ‘Future U: Creating the Universities We Want’, Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations’, 27-28 February 2014.

The social science imagination (Social Science Centre podcast #1), Siren FM radio, with Richard Keeble (November 2013).

Behind the headlines (Social Science Centre podcast), Siren FM radio, with D. McAleavey, Mike Ward and Richard Keeble (29 January 2013).

Challenges, tensions and barriers to emancipatory models of student voice‘, with D. Bishop, Student as Producer Conference, University of Lincoln (26-27 June 2013).

Seeing the ‘ordinary extraordinary’ everyday: educated hope in everyday life‘, Beyond Glorious: The Radical in Engaged Artistic Practices, Birkbeck College, University of London (29 May – 1 June).

By ones and twos and tens’: pedagogies of possibility for higher education‘, Newcastle University (April 2013).

Humanising pedagogies: limits and possibilities in the institutionalised university‘, British Sociological Association annual conference (Sociology of Education stream), London (April 2013).

How global is the “global” transformation of the university? The importance of transnational knowledge production, critique and imagination‘, University of Central Asia Public Lecture Series, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan (23 April 2013).

Indebted servitude: the work of ‘the calling’ in the new feudal professions‘, ‘The University, the Scholar and the Student’ seminar series on Thinking the Present with Max Weber, British Sociological Association, Max Weber Study Group, University of Salford (December 2012).

The marketised university and the politics of motherhood. ‘The marketized university and the politics of motherhood’, Nottingham Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice, University of Nottingham (October 2012).

A practice that aspires: pedagogies of creativity, democracy and inclusion in popular higher education, with D. McAleavey, Creativity and Democracy (3rd IJADE and NSEAD research conference), October 2012, Liverpool John Moores University .

‘Pedagogies of possibility: legacies and futures of critical education, Newcastle University, May 2013.

Taking great pains: critical theory, affective pedagogies and radical democracy, Real Utopias (American Sociological Association annual conference), 17-21 August 2012, Denver, CO.

The affective experience of academic labour, The Embodied and Affective Experience of Academic Labour, University of Leeds (2012).

Taking great pains: the affective politics of radical democracy, British Sociological Association Annual Conference 2012, 11th – 13th April 2012, University Of Leeds.

‘Occupy: a new pedagogy of space and time’, with M. Neary, Society for Research into Higher Education, University of Bristol (9 March 2012).

‘Learning at the edge: troublesome knowledge, public pedagogies and critical research’, Teaching in Public, Doctoral Study School, University of Lincoln (3-5 March 2012).

‘Re-imagining the university’, a teach-in organised by the Education Activist Network, Leeds Metropolitan University (26 November 2011). Listen to talk and discussion here.

‘Re-imagining education: what is critical pedagogy?’ with S. Motta at The Space, hosted by the Really Open University (12 November 2011).

‘Education and Social Change in the Americas’, invited speaker, Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice, University of Nottingham (June 2011).

‘The Human Significance of the ‘Cuts’: Reducing the ‘Deficit’ or Creating Subservient Human Beings?’ Invited speaker, University of Salford (May 2011).

‘Cracking capitalist realism: the new student movement and its post-capitalist politics’, with Joyce Canaan, Marxism and Education: Renewing the Dialogue, Institute of Education, London (April 2011). Read the paper here.

‘Logics of occupation’, a workshop facilitated at Nottingham University, Critical Pedagogies Group (February 2011).

‘The crisis and future of the university’, speaker and workshop facilitator, London School of Economics (October 2010).

‘“Searching for the struggle”: the politics of articulation and the futures of the university’, Invited speaker at workshop, University of California at Berkeley (October 2010).

‘“Cultural transformation” as discipline and critical politics’, Culture and the Making of Worlds, European Sociological Association Culture Section, annual conference, Milan (October 2010).

‘University rankings and the consolidation of elite networked institutions in an era of global capital’ (with Dr Chris Bolsmann), British Association of International and Comparative Education, annual conference, University of East Anglia (September 2010).

‘Revalorizing critique in academic and activist education’, Critical Education for Critical Times, Centre for Social and Global Justice, University of Nottingham (May 2010).

Sarah Amsler on critical pedagogy, critical theory and hope, a dialogue with Gurnam Singh (October 2009).

‘Crisis thinking, ethical action and social change’, invited paper for seminar on Affirmative Critique, Institute  of Advanced Studies (Durham University) and the Social/Spatial Theory Research Cluster, Department of Geography, Durham University, 24 June 2009.

‘Ethnographies of critique: critical judgment as cultural practice’, conference on ‘The Future(s) of Critical Theory’, Frankfurt Am Main, 19-21 March 2009.

‘Educating the emotions: the new biopolitics of critical pedagogy’, invited paper for ESRC  Seminar Series on ‘Changing the Human Subject: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Emotional Well-Being and Social Justice in Education Policy and Practice’, 3 February 2009.

‘Bringing hope to crisis: critical thinking, ethical action and social change’, ESRC Seminar on Future Ethics, University of Manchester, January 2009.

‘Rethinking the “crisis of hope” in critical theory’, Hope: Probing the Boundaries, Oxford University, 24-6 September 2008.

‘Recovering the sociological imagination: critique and judgment in cultural sociology’, American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, Critical Theory Section, Boston, 1-4 August 2008.

Communities without borders? Promises and challenges of social science networks’, Academic Fellowship Program, Sociology discipline meeting, Alushta, Crimea, May 2008.

‘Education against disutopia: from “critical praxis” to the “education of desire”, American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, Critical Theory Section, New York, 11-14 August 2007.

‘Needing a crisis: the paradox of “sustainability” in critical social theory’, Social Sustainability Conference, Kingston University, 30 June 2007.

‘Towards a sociology of hope: critical research as praxis in higher education.’ Discourse, Power Resistance Conference, University of Manchester, 20-22 April 2006.

‘Social science in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan: colonial creation or indigenous institution?’ Post-colonialism & post-socialism: social anthropology workshop, Cambridge, June 2002.

‘Where shall we begin in our society? Superiority, inferiority, and intellectual colonization in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan’, CECOB Special Convention, Nationalities, Identities and Regional Cooperation: Compatibilities and Incompatibilities, Forlì, Italy, June 2002.