What is knowledge co-production, how does it improve our understanding of society towards its betterment, and how does it contribute to research-led teaching at ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳? The School encourages multi-level engagement in the production of institutional knowledge and student involvement through initiatives such as , the and alongside structures. These foster participation within and across departments. The Department of Gender Studies builds on and advances these efforts by building a community of scholars at all stages of their academic journey to articulate and maintain the links between theory and practice. Its long history of encouraging collaborative relationships with and among students is guided by an ethical commitment to and solidarity with those made marginalized by systems of power and oppression and by the application of interdisciplinary, critical, intersectional, transnational research to learning. Knowledge co-production is a notable example of this.
commitment to collaboration and accountability in knowledge production derives from to include the perspectives of under-represented and marginalised peoples in order to transform the spaces where knowledge is produced, legitimised taught and implemented. Embedding a into existing forms of knowledge production, and the practice such knowledge informs, requires a recognition of the continuous negotiation of and of the to generate conceptual and methodological innovation across the humanities and the social sciences. Questioning the taken for granted ways of knowing, and giving analytical expression to the epistemic margins, co-production (and the ethos it entails) in research and teaching can offer new insights, concepts, and ideas, and thus strengthen originality and significance of scholarship.
Examples of knowledge co-production include . Collaborations with community groups, activists, local authorities, etc. prioritise democratic decision-making and seek to bridge the distance between the ‘researcher’ and the ‘researched’. Although such collaborations cannot fully overcome unequal power relations, especially when working with stigmatised, marginalised, and criminalised groups, they aim to minimise them and provide space for validation and claim-making. Creating an academic environment which makes space for the process of is a way of implementing feminist praxis in higher education.
A few years ago, Gender Studies, in collaboration with Statistics and the International Inequalities Institute, hosted What We Treasure We Measure, a theatrical engagement with gender inequality where actors produced a human PowerPoint of the Gender Equality Index and engaged students and faculty to consider whether you can put a number on inequality, and if so, what you can do about it? This is reflective of engagement with the inspired theatrical forms of education to analyse inequality and oppression and drive social change at the community level.
As a hub for feminist economics analysis and teaching, with close links to the , the Department has for many years hosted annual Autumn Statement watch-along sessions. During these events, our MSc students joined a network of experts from academia and the women’s movement to witness and take part in the application of the conceptual tools of feminist economics to policy in real time. Several of the MSc students have joined the WBG after graduating from ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳.
Experimenting with and expanding on pedagogical approaches are a key part of knowledge co-production, as teaching in Gender Studies and in Sociology demonstrates. By critically engaging with conventional archives and incorporating alternative archival sources and processes, teaching and learning takes place inside and outside the classroom and provides the space for students to engage with what counts as knowledge, develop research skills, and generate research questions.
Student-led feminist knowledge co-production within the department includes the initiative. For some students, FMAW was their first encounter with feminist activism in parts of the world that do not typically receive sustained global news coverage. A significant portion of students whose investment in gender was informed by marginality were able to generate their own interventions and narratives through peer-to-peer education and storytelling. Started during the 2020-21 academic year by Milena D’Atri, it emerged ‘to reclaim the sharing spaces that were lost to the COVID-19… [and] bridge the contradiction between the content of what we study (i.e. the neoliberal illusion of a self-sufficient individual, and how that idea is tied to patriarchal, colonial, racist and capitalist structures) and the ways in which we do it (i.e. through pedagogies that are constructed upon that idea of individuality, in a highly competitive environment, and in 2020/21, from the solitude of our screens). (Milena D’Atri, MSc Gender, Policy & Inequalities 2020-21). Sara Milenkovska continued organising meetings in the 2021-22 cohort, which ‘critically examined the epistemic gap where many of us felt that our histories were missing from mainstream knowledge about feminism… Co-producing knowledge, collaborating and creating coalitions along the way – for me it is the most important aspect of studying gender. This field with its interdisciplinary and intersectional approach, builds on the activism and struggle of many people… (Sara Milenkovska, MSc Gender, Policy & Inequalities 2021-22).
Co-production of knowledge spanning research and the development of an academic profile also involves PhD students who seek to incorporate voices from within and outside academia. The blog established in 2011, is run by PhD researchers and a wider editorial collective. Its highlights that it is “committed to an open and critical engagement that is responsive to different points of view from within and outside academic spaces and welcomes pieces from