Over the course of this series, we’ve talked about the importance of education beyond the university. We've taken you to a public park, a cathedral, an art gallery, a library, a living room, a laundromat and to the streets. But universities do matter, as institutions and as places. In our final episode, we visit two – Goldsmiths, University of London, and Bard College Berlin – and listen to conversations taking place in- and outside their lecture halls. 

First, host Agata Lisiak travels to Goldsmith’s Centre for Urban and Community Research to take part in an event with sociologists Emma Jackson, Yasmin Gunaratnam and Suzanne Hall. They discuss how community and care can be practised in academia despite its hostile and discouraging structures. 

Then, from Berlin, political scientist Aysuda Kölemen discusses threats to academic freedom posed by authoritarian regimes and neoliberal universities alike. Sociologist Aslı Vatansever tells us more about academic labour activism in Germany, where over 90% of academics work on precarious fixed-term contracts.

Episode Credits

Host: Agata Lisiak
Guests: Yasmin Gunaratnam, Suzanne Hall, Emma Jackson, Aysuda Kölemen, Aslı Vatansever
Writer and Producer: Agata Lisiak
Senior Editor: Susan Stone 
Sound Producer: Reece Cox
Music: Studio R
Artwork: Bose Sarmiento
In partnership with: The Sociological Review Foundation
Funded by: Volkswagen Foundation

Find more about Spatial Delight at The Sociological Review.

Episode Resources

Doreen Massey’s work quoted or mentioned in this episode:

• Time to Think, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 26.2 (2001): 257-261.
• A Global Sense of Place, Marxism Today, 1991.
• Kilburn Manifesto: After Neoliberalism? 2015.
• Vocabularies of the Economy, Kilburn Manifesto, 2015.

Also mentioned:

• Centre for Urban and Community Research, Goldsmiths, University of London
• New university job cuts fuel rising outrage on campuses, Anna Fazackerley, The Guardian, 24 October 2021
• Open Letter to Frances Corner 
• The Migrant’s Paradox: Street Livelihoods and Marginal Citizenship in Britain, Suzanne M. Hall (University of Minnesota Press, 2021)
• Academic Freedom and Precarity in the Global North: Free as a Bird, ed. Aslı Vatansever and Aysuda Kölemen (Routledge, 2022)
• At the Margins of Academia: Exile, Precariousness, and Subjectivity, Aslı Vatansever (Brill, 2020)
• Network for Decent Labour in Academia
• The Dead Ladies Show
• Uncommon Sense: Cities, with Romit Chowdhury, 2022

More resources available at The Sociological Review