BRIDGES Course
There are 2 possible ways of teaching the BRIDGES course:
- Online: Using the BRIDGES Virtual Lab and the associated MIRO space.
- Face to face: Downloading the PDF Course and applying it in person.
Workload: 75 hours, equivalent to 3 ECTS
Is it possible to decolonize education? How can we diversify the production and reproduction of knowledge? How to transform the university and other learning spaces in order to dismantle structural racism? How to struggle against discrimination within the university from a critical, feminist and intersectional perspective? Which are the everyday practices and mechanisms that, in classrooms, reproduce the social inequalities that also occur outside of them? What pedagogical tools and strategies can we use to produce radical interventions within these spaces?
The BRIDGES COURSE Building Solidarities – Feminist and Anti-Racist Practices in Higher Education was collaboratively designed by academics and activists from Higher Education Institutions and Civil Society Organisation. It aims at promoting and experimenting with feminist and anti-racist pedagies to transform spaces of Higher Education.
- To provide the tools to analyse the mechanisms and conditions of institutional inequality that are produced and reproduced within Higher Education.
- To explore and deepen our undertsanding of key theories, concepts and practices related to anti-racist and feminist struggles.
- To experiment with, and put into practice, pedagogical methods and strategies that challenge racism and discrimination within and outside the classroom.
- To promote participants’ role as agents of change within Higher Education Institutions.
The BRIDGES COURSE is inspired by the Participatory Action Research (PAR) framework of BRIDGES. It involves a series of sessions (roundtables, theory workshops and collective discussions), group dynamics and spatial interventions.
Participants will be asked to critically and actively engage with the content previously produced by the BRIDGES team, and to develop a group project which further develops some aspects of the curriculum. Each group is accompanied by a facilitator, who provides for guidance and support throughout. These collective projects will then be presented to the whole group of participants to encourage feedback and mutual learning.
The BRIDGES course is structured around three main thematic blocks and a set of transversal activities.
Racism and Other forms of Exclusions in Higher Education. A diagnosis of public policies, daily life in Universities and anti-racist struggles.
This block offers an intersectional diagnosis of structural racism in HEI with a particular focus on struggles that aim to decolonise education and a critique of eurocentrism. This Block includes:
A1) “Where do we think? A critical world thinking map” (intro – complete)
A2) “Theorizing structural racism and eurocentrism in HE”
A3) “Im/Possible Roundtable: Dismantling structural racism and eurocentrism in HEI”
Theories as Tools. Feminist anti-racist perspectives and concepts.
This block seeks to challenge the ways in which theory is used as a tool of dominant narratives, and to explore how theory can be used as a tool for empowerment and liberation. It comprises discussions on how perception and representation is shaped by hegemonic frames; engaging/experimenting with different ways of seeing, viewing, watching, looking, gazing, and embodying a politics of location in theorising that draws on all of our senses. This Block includes the slots:
Decolonizing Higher Education. Radical pedagogies and epistemologies.
This block combines the work of activists both inside and outside academia. It seeks to question the power imbalances between academic knowledge and knowledge produced from non-academic perspectives that normally privilege the former. It comprises discussions that depart from embodied experience, as well as from alliance-building practices as feminist pedagogies. It also proposes to reflect upon the ethical entanglements related with anti-racist pedagogical practice. This Block includes the slots:
C1) “Building a pedagogy of the alliance”
C3) “Split exercise: Worksheets on critical teaching and The Dangers of the Single Store”
These aim at eliciting knowledge building through embodied personal and collective experiences. They draw on innovative formats of participation, including the slots:
| MONDAY | TUESDAY | WEDNESDAY | THURSDAY | FRIDAY | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | |||||
| 15:00-16:30 | |||||
| 17:00-18:30 | Course Introduction | Open Doors 1 Selection of the group project in conversation with facilitators |
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| Week 2 | |||||
| 15:00-16:30 | Α1+Α2 World thinking Map + Theorising structural racism |
Α4 Academic Carrousel |
Β1 Crisis as Appearance |
Β3 Picnic: Theory Workshop |
|
| 17:00-18:30 | A3 Roundtable |
Β2 Photography workshop |
Τ1 A Space of Caring |
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| Week 3 | |||||
| 15:00-16:30 | C1 Pedagogy of the alliance |
C2 Re-embodying Knowledge |
T2 Antiracist Tour |
Presentation of Collective Projects | |
| 17:00-18:30 | Open Doors 2: Meeting of working groups with facilitators. |
C3 Critical Thinking Worksheets The dangers of the single story |
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Reading List
- Autar, Louise. (2017). Decolonising the classroom Credibility-based strategies for inclusive classrooms. Tijdschrift Voor Genderstudies, 20(3), 305–320.
https://doi.org/10.5117/TVGN2017.3AUTA - Bhambra, Gurminder K., Gebrial, Dalia & Nisancioglu, Kerem (2018). Decolonizing the university. London: Pluto Press. Available at: https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745338200/decolonising-the-university/
- Bridges Consortium (2021). Bridges Toolkit. Available at the top of this page or here: https://buildingbridges.space/about-toolkit/
- Gutiérrez-Rodríguez, Encarnación (2016). Sensing dispossession: Women and gender studies between institutional racism and migration control policies in the neoliberal university. Women’s Studies International Forum, 54, 167–177.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2015.06.013 - hooks, bell (1994). Teaching to Transgress: Education As the Practice of Freedom. New York, NY: Routledge.
- Icaza Garza, Rosalba & Vázquez, Rolando (2017). Intersectionality and Diversity in Higher Education.Tijdschrift voor Orthopedagogiek, 7-8, 349-357. Available at: hdl.handle.net/1765/103271
- Lorde, Audre (1997) “Afterimages” from The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde. New York: W. W. Norton and Company Inc. Pp. 339.
- Lorde, Audre (1984) “Poetry is not a luxury”, “Uses of the erotic: the erotic as power” and “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”, from Essays and Speeches. New York: Crossing Press. Pp.71-77; Pp. 103-144; Pp. 203-209.
- Nayak, Suryia (2017). Location as method. Qualitative Research Journal, 17(3), 202–216.
https://doi.org/10.1108/QRJ-02-2017-0004 - Elhilo, Safia (2017, 2019, 2021). Available at: https://safia-mafia.com/books
- Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (1988). Can the Subaltern Speak?. Die Philosophin, 14 (27):42-58.
https://doi.org/10.5840/philosophin200314275 - Tate, Shirley Anne & Bagguley, Paul (2017). Building the anti-racist university: next steps, Race Ethnicity and Education, 20(3), 289-299.
https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2016.1260227 - Thompson, Vanessa Eileen and Zablotsky, Veronika (2016). “Rethinking Diversity in Academic Institutions”. Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women’s and Gender Studies, 2016, vol. 16, pp.77-95.
The team behind the BRIDGES Course
The course is based on the collaboration between researchers, educators and activists based in Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom and Greece, within the framework of the Erasmus + BRIDGES project: “Building Inclusive Societies: Diversifying Knowledge and Tackling Discrimination through Civil Society Participation in Universities”. The team developing and facilitating the pilot course consist of members of the project partners: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain), Sindillar-Sindihogar (Spain), Justus Liebig Univeristy Giessen (Germany), an.ge.kommen (Germany), University of Brighton (UK), Office of Displaced Designers (ODD) (UK), Feminist Autonomous Centre for Research (Greece), and Zaatar (Greece).