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Creating Cracks in Academic Capitalism with the Really Open University Dr Andr Pusey a.pusey@leedsbeckett.ac.uk Leeds Beckett University Slide 2 Militant Ethnography Militant ethnography seeks to overcome the divide between research and practice (Juris, 2007, p165). Scholar activism Engaged research Action research Slide 3 The [depolitical] Student Experience? The University as a depoliticisation machine Slide 4 What was the ROU? Established in January 2010 to resist cuts but also expand the critique/debate about higher education Was composed of both students and non-students, undergraduates and postgraduates Was attempting to be in but not of the university Attempted to thrive on the edge or the periphery- something we can conceive of as the creative cramped space, discussed by Deleuze & Guattari (1986). Slide 5 Strike/Occupy/Transform! ROU 1.0 ROU 2.0 ROU 3.0 Slide 6 ROU 1.0 Planned occupied university Participatory meetings Propaganda Protest Slide 7 ROU 2.0 Three Reforms for a different future Emergence of the student movement Reimagine the University Slide 8 Slide 9 The Space Project Six months funding Temporary autonomous education space Self-managed Meeting space, talk, courses ROU 3.0 Slide 10 W e want the Space to be a meeting space; meetings of thought, of practice, of people, of ideas. We see it as a place of critical engagement with ideas and practices of transforming the world and ourselves within it. We are trying, awkwardly, imperfectly, to create a space where everything overlaps and influences each other. So instead of separate groups putting on events in isolation we want to encourage collaboration, cross- contamination. This isnt to grow a singular project but to hopefully move us all a little bit, in personal and political transformation. Slide 11 Reflections ROU produced new political pedagogical spaces Challenged the inside/outside of the university Ultimately unsustainable