New Abstract / Roundtable discussion: Thinking together from within the times that worry us
The roundtable discussion emerged out of curators’ shared worries and concerns from within their academic situatedness and the need to think about the ways in which researchers and members of the academic community may respond to political, environmental, and social crises and systemic violences of contemporary world. In particular the curators invite readers to zoom into challenges of academic life today that is in no way isolated from broader problems and social and political debates. How are research practices and institutions involved in maintaining, fighting against, or reflecting on the troubling conditions of living in the 21st century? The curators invited five scholars, whose activism, practice, and theoretical inventiveness have been an inspiration, to share their insights from their own situated (Haraway, 1988) perspectives. The roundtable is meant to bring together distinct voices: feminist, Indigenous, postcolonial, and anti-oppressive perspectives on practicing as researchers, teachers, and activists – rooted both in academic environments and their respective communities. Gurminder K. Bhambra, Andrea Pető, Jessie Loyer, Mariya Ivancheva, and Nanna Hlín Halldórsdóttir share their diagnoses, knowledge, experiences, lessons learnt, practices introduced, ways of mobilising, and hopes for the future. The variety of voices, writing styles, academic backgrounds, and adopted methodologies provides what we believe to be a process of putting feminist new materialist politics to work (Dolphijn, van der Tuin, 2012). It happens across disciplines, theoretical standpoints, and generations. It is an effort to share struggles, ways of coping, and comforting outside of often limiting borders and classifixations (van der Tuin 2014). Last but not least, the curators of this roundtable wish to think of it as an ongoing invitation to share worries and respond to them through resistance, collaborations, solidarity, care, and kinship.
Key words: academia, resistance, collaboration, solidarity, care, kinship, worry.
