Public Pedagogies Institute Conference
November 24 -25, 2022, Melbourne, Australia

The Public Pedagogies Institute invites proposal that respond to our 2022 conference theme Sometimes Connect.  The intent of this theme is to explore alliances that afford change.  At present there is an ever present necessity to consider how ‘we’ can work together toward mutual issues of concern. The Institute recognises the urgency for change that is increasingly stymied in prevailing dominant institutions.

This conference extends the call raised by Burdick and Sandlin (Journal of Public Pedagogies 2021, p.18) “Anker and Felski (2017) state, “[r]ethinking critique can . . . forge stronger links between intellectual life and the nonacademic world. Such links are not simply a matter of capitulation or collusion but can offer a vital means of influencing larger conversations and intervening in institutional policies and structures” (p. 19). This collaboration, employing what Latour (2004) calls an emphasis on “matters of concern [. . .] whose import then will no longer be to debunk, but to protect and to care” (p. 232) might abandon the wages, antagonistic nature, and insular interests of academic critique towards a pedagogy of care. Similarly, Charman and Dixon (Theory and Methods of Public Pedagogies Research, 2021) argue that within the public realm there is the circulation of knowledge and authority made manifest in the educative agent. The educative agent is the public pedagogue. “We do not see public pedagogy as necessarily being about a particular kind of political agency as the very act of knowledge circulation out-side of the bounded discursive power of claimed institutional knowledge is itself broadly speaking political (Charman and Dixon p.34, 2021). Max Liboiron writes “there can be solidarity without a We. There must be solidarity without a universal We. The absence of We and the acknowledgement of many we’s (including those to which you/I/we do not belong) is imperative for good relations in solidarity against ongoing colonialism and allows cooperation’ with the incommensurabilities of different worlds, values and obligations” (Liboiron, Max. 2021. Pollution Is Colonialism. Durham: Duke University Press pp. 24-25).

Extending these prompts this conference seeks to explore what constitutes connection, how can alliances be built, what are the affordances for social change and what are moments of discord

Proposals may take the form of exemplars of practice, theoretical understandings of social movements both past and present, workshops or creative practice. The Public Pedagogies Institute works at the intersection of creativity, community education and theory.

Please note: the deadline has been extended to October 14, 2022. Submit a proposal to Karen.Charman@vu.edu.au