International Conference
Dismantling Walls, Building Bridges: Feminist Anti-racist Alliances for a Radical Education
La Bonne, C/Sant Pere més Baix, 7 Barcelona
Registration deadline: 10th of June
We present the international conference Dismantling walls, building bridges: feminist anti-racist alliances for a radical education, which will take place in Barcelona on the 7th and 8th of July, at the Francesca Bonnemaison Cultural Center (La Bonne).
This international conference is part of the BRIDGES project (Building Inclusive Societies: Diversifying Knowledge and Tackling Discrimination through Civil Society Participation in Universities), an initiative born out of a partnership between different European universities and social organizations with a common purpose: to address the practical ways in which higher education institutions can approach discrimination and promote social inclusion. The project is inspired by the growing consensus about the inability of university institutions to include diversity, both from the point of view of the context and the different experiences of their diverse student body, as well as the theoretical and methodological proposals that make up the curricular material taught in them.
The conference is open to all those interested in creating new ways of understanding the production and exchange of knowledge from a feminist anti-racist perspective: students, researchers, teachers, activists, artists. We believe in the importance of betting on interdisciplinary transversal spaces, where to share practice and theory around shared struggles and fights.
More about BRIDGES
BRIDGES is an innovative project thanks to its collaborative ethic and methodological framework: Participatory Action Research, which proposes horizontal work between higher education institutions and civil society organizations, in order to generate and transfer innovative pedagogical strategies based on the generally undervalued and yet very valuable experience of disadvantaged social groups.
To this end, BRIDGES focuses on the development of new tools to strengthen the competencies of current and future teachers. During its three-year duration, the project has developed a range of materials aimed at helping higher education institutions contribute to the inclusion of socially marginalized groups that encounter barriers due to intersecting discrimination based on race, ethnicity, language, religion, administrative status, gender identity and expression, sexuality, class, age and disability. As main results, the project has developed a Virtual Pedagogical Laboratory, a Pedagogical Toolkit to contribute to dismantle structures of oppression in higher education, a Course and recently a Monograph, which systematizes the action-research process of the project. This last product will be presented during the conference and will be available on the web and on paper on the event.
This has been possible thanks to the collaborative work and alliances between the entities from different countries that conform the consortium: Spain, with the Autonomous University of Barcelona and Sindillar; Germany, with the University of Giessen and An.Ge.Kommen; the United Kingdom, with the University of Brighton and the Office of Displaced Designers; and Greece, with the Feminist Autonomous Centre for research and Za’atar.
Basic and useful information
- Attendants will be given a hard copy of the monograph.
- Simultaneous translation: English – Spanish. Install the ZOOM app in advance and bring your own headphones. If you don’t have it, we will provide you with a pair.
- Deadline for registrations: 10th of June
- Limited places
- In case you need an invitation letter for scholarships or grants support for your attendance, please send us an email to hello buildingbridges.space
Programme
| Thursday 7th July | |
|---|---|
| Time | Activity |
| 16:45 – 17:15 |
Reception
Vallespir Room (2nd floor) |
| 17:15 – 18:45 |
Panel discussion: "A decolonial university? Limits and possibilities” Norma Falconi (Sindillar); Encarnación Gutiérrez (U. of Frankfurt) and Rosalba Icaza (Erasmus University Rotterdam). Moderator: Marisela Montenegro (UAB) Translation: Spanish - English Vallespir Room (2nd floor) |
| 18:45 – 19:00 | Break |
| 19:00 – 20:30 |
Monograph presentation “Dismantling walls, building bridges: Creating antiracist feminist alliances within, outside, and against universities” BRIDGES team Translation: English - Spanish Vallespir Room (2nd floor) |
| 20:30 – 21:00 |
Toast, snacks and more Gran Room (3rd floor) |
| Friday 8th July | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Time | Activity | Time | Activity | ||
| 16:45 – 17:00 |
Reception
Vallespir Room (2nd floor) |
||||
| 17:00 – 18:30 |
Workshops: Shift 1 |
18:00-20:30 | Antiracist Tour | ||
|
Workshop 1
Abolishing the Bordered Gaze:
Watching Photographs from a Queer Feminist Perspective, by FACR
Translation: English - Spanish Vallespir Room (2nd floor) |
Workshop 2
(In)visible colonialism in academia, by Constanza Llorca and Camila Opazo
Spanish only Bentrobades Room (2nd floor) |
Anti-Racist Tour, by Sindillar
Spanish only Meeting Point: Bonnemaison Hall |
|||
| 18:30-19:00 |
Break
Gran Room (3rd Floor) |
||||
| 19:00-20:30 |
Workshops: Shift 2 |
||||
|
Workshop 3
Activist timeline workshop, by Cuso Ehrich (AnGeKommen) and Marleno Nika (Za’atar NGO) Translation: English - Spanish Vallespir Room (2nd floor) |
Workshop 4
Rethinking '92: Anti-fascist and Anti-racist Memories in Barcelona, by Núria Solsona and Catalina Álvarez (UAB)
Spanish only Bentrobades Room (2nd floor) |
||||
| 20:30-21:00 | Closure Vallespir Room (2nd floor) |
||||
Detailed schedule
Thursday 7th of July17:15 – 18:45 Conversation “A decolonial university? Limits and possibilities
Vallespir Room (2nd Floor)
Translation Spanish – English – Spanish
Following the dialogical character of the Bridges project, this round table is set as a conversation between three women – Norma Falconi, Encarnación Gutiérrez, and Rosalba Icaza – that have strong backgrounds of feminist antiracist struggles in their respective contexts. They will discuss the importance to intervene radically within universities and other educational spaces as well as the current limits for promoting decolonial perspectives as well as critical pedagogical practices in such spaces.
19:00 – 20:30 BRIDGES Monograph Presentation: Dismantling walls, building bridges: Creating antiracist feminist alliances within, outside, and against universities
Vallespir Room (2nd Floor)
Translation English – Spanish – English
In this block, we present a Monograph produced by the consortium of BRIDGES. The book engages with current and urgent debates on decolonising education. By taking into account the diversity of our trajectories, It also discusses the ethical-political principles that guided our work, pointing to the possibilities and limits of co-creation of meaning. The BRIDGES monograph is a collective effort that highlights the contradictions involved in an ongoing project of decolonisation that seeks to confront domination processes that underpin current capitalist, patriarchal and ethnocentric universities and societies.
WORKSHOPS
18:00 – 20:30 Anti Racist Route of Care
Sindillar/Sindihogar
Meeting point: Bonnemaison Hall
Only Spanish
The Antiracist Route of Care is a feminist-looked tour of the struggles waged by women to sustain life from the 18th century to the present day. It was conceived collectively in 2018, together with Papeles Para Todas y Todos and historian Isabel Segura. It is currently being developed by the women of Sindicato Sindihogar. The project is based on our political conviction to connect memories and rescue the voices of women, recognizing ourselves as transmitters of knowledge. In 2021 the project won the Barcelona Municipal Immigration Council Award.
17:00 – 18:30 Workshop 1: Abolishing the Bordered Gaze: Watching Photographs from a Queer Feminist Perspective
Anna Carastathis and Myrto Tsilimpounidi (FAC research)
Vallespir Room (2nd Floor)
Translation English – Spanish – English
Since 2015, we have seen an explosion of images of people crossing Europe’s borders. How do photographs reproduce the hegemonic narratives of the ‘refugee crisis’? By watching photographic representations of ‘refugees’ (from 2015 and from 2022), in this workshop we will examine photographs as visual representations of state categories (for instance, that of the ‘refugee’ versus the ‘migrant’). We will also theorize these categories as representations that congeal around habituated, bordered ways of seeing, feeling, and thinking. Freeing our vision from the stranglehold that border regimes seek to impose on our perceptual and affective life (what do we see and for whom do we feel concern?) means practicing ways of seeing that exceed the normative frames that the state imposes, or: abolishing the bordered gaze.
17:00 – 18:30 Workshop 2: (In)visible Colonialism in Academia
Constanza Llorca and Camila Opazo
Bentrobades Room (2nd Floor)
Only Spanish
The workshop has two main objectives (1) to learn about and reflect on the ways in which colonialism is currently manifested in the academy, and (2) to collaboratively develop concrete proposals to decolonize academic spaces. It will be a space for dialogue, where the voices and experiences of those who participate will be central to the development of the workshop. It is expected that the knowledge built collaboratively in this instance will be useful for future scientific work committed to the decolonization of science.
19:00 – 20:30 Workshop 3: Activist Timeline Workshop
Cuso Ehrich (An.Ge.Kommen) and Marleno Nika (Za’atar NGO)
Vallespir Room (2nd Floor)
Translation English – Spanish – English
In this workshop we will reflect on the simultaneity of political events, the groups we work in and our personal stories. Together we will create a visual timeline that shows that significant political events are happening at the same time as our personal relationships, as well as our work, and we will reflect on how these dimensions relate to each other. Through the timeline participants will also get to know the events and people who shaped the organizations Za’atar and An.Ge.Kommen, two organizations that work closely with refugees and migrants. Additionally, everyone has the chance to speak and visualize their own story and/or work and see it being embedded in the collective timeline.
19:00 – 20:30 Workshop 4: Rethinking ’92 from today: Antifascist and Antirracist Memories in Barcelona
Núria Solsona and Catalina Álvarez (UAB)
Bentrobades Room (2nd Floor)
Only Spanish
We remember in order to intervene the senses of the present, projecting other possible futures. In this workshop, we are interested in thinking about the relationship between antifascist and antiracist movements in the city of Barcelona through memory. To do so, we will work with materials collected at the Centre de Documentació Mercè Grenzner (Can Batlló) around political mobilizations against three milestones of 1992 in Spain: the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, the celebration of the fifth centenary of the colonization of America and the “Universal Expo” in Seville. The participants of this workshop will find a space in which to reflect on these milestones, the experiences of struggle around them, and their relationship with the violence and resistance of the present.