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

Geografes como Doreen Massey argumentan que el espacio es producido socialmente. En este episodio hablamos de la producción del espacio por cuerpas migrantes y escuchamos del carnaval cómo una perfecta invasión espacial.

Bose Sarmiento, artista feminista, nos transporta a las calles de Berlín durante el 8 de Marzo. El día en que las protestas del día internacional de la mujer toman la ciudad. En el caos de las demostraciones, se deja llevar por la música para encontrar a la Marea Abya Yala. Lo que guía este episodio es la curiosidad acerca de la musicalidad que rodea la protesta latinoamericana. ¿Cómo suena? ¿Cuál es su rol en la protesta? ¿De dónde surge esta “negociación del espacio" cómo la llamaría Massey, y qué espacios produce?

Para adentrarse en ello, Bose habla con la antropóloga y bailarina, Cristina Barría Knopf, una de las líderes de la colectiva Comparsa Carnaval en Berlín. Allí, Cristina nos habla del carnaval, un rito de suma importancia en Abya Yala. Por años, era durante el carnaval, que las raíces originarias lograban permear la cultura de dominación colonial. Hoy en Berlín, durante las protestas del 8M, la Comparsa trae ese rito de resistencia y alienta a mujeres y disidencias a ocupar el espacio público, les alienta a sostener la diferencia.

Episode Credits
Host: Bose Sarmiento
Guest: Ana Cristina Barría Knopf
Writer: Bose Sarmiento
Producer: Agata Lisiak
Sound Producer: Bose Sarmiento
Music: Studio R
Artwork: Bose Sarmiento
Special Thanks: All the Abya Yala collectives making noise at demonstrations
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:

• Space, Place and Gender (Polity Press, 1994)
• For Space (Sage, 2005)
• A Global Sense of Place, Marxism Today, 1991

Recommended resources:

• Space Invaders: Race, Gender and Bodies Out of Place, Nirmal Puwar (Bloomsbury, 2004)
• Performance, Diana Taylor (Duke University Press, 2016)
• The Archive and the Repertoire, Diana Taylor (Duke University Press, 2003)
• ¿Qué son los estudios de Performance? 2015
• Hasta abajo | Radio Ambulante Lisette Arevalo, season 12, episode 22, 2023.
• iLe: canciones contra el poder | Radio Ambulante Silvia Viñas y Eliezer Budasoff, season 12, episode 26, 2023.
• Paloma Leiva’s YouTube channel
• “Quedamos en el limbo”. ¿Quién habla sobre las cuidadoras remuneradas en el 8M?

You can find more resources at The Sociological Review

Doreen Massey was a geographer and public scholar concerned with how political action takes place not only on the level of policy, but also on the level of activism and everyday discourse. Host Agata Lisiak speaks about Massey’s political engagement with Jo Littler, Professor of Social Analysis and Cultural Politics at City, University of London. Jo is part of the editorial collective of Soundings, the journal of politics and culture Massey co-founded in 1995.

Jo and Agata meet with James Marriott from Platform, a London-based collective of artists, activists and researchers working on social and environmental justice issues. James tells us about Massey’s involvement with Platform, her “bad behaviour” – her love of challenging the system – and her lasting impact on his thinking and action.

We also discuss Jo’s recent publications: The Care Manifesto, written with the Care Collective, and Left Feminisms, a collection of interviews with feminist activists and theorists politically engaged across a variety of issues and locations.

We’d love to hear from you: what inspires your political engagement? When do you decide to act and what formats, tools, or tactics do you use? What are the joys and challenges of political collaborations that you’ve encountered? Please fill out this form to share your thoughts with us.

Episode Credits
Host: Agata Lisiak
Guests: Jo Littler, James Marriott
Writer and Producer: Agata Lisiak
Senior Editor: Susan Stone
Sound Producer: Reece Cox
Production Assistant: Adèle Martin
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:

• World City (Wiley, 2007)
• Space, Place, and Gender (Polity Press, 1994)
• After Neoliberalism? The Kilburn Manifesto, with Stuart Hall and Michael Rustin (Lawrence and Wishart, 2015)
• When Theory Meets Politics, Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography 40.3 (2008): 492-497.

Also mentioned:

• Left Feminisms: Conversations on the Personal and Political, Jo Littler (Lawrence and Wishart, 2023)
• The Care Manifesto: The Politics of Interdependence, Care Collective (Verso, 2020)
• Crude Britannia: How Oil Shaped a Nation, James Marriott and Terry Macalister (Pluto Press, 2021)
• Platform London
• Take Back the City
• The Doreen Massey we knew, Jo Littler and Jeremy Gilbert, Open Democracy, 2016
• European Social Forum
• Massey, D., Hall, S., Rustin, M., et al. 1995. Uncomfortable Times, Soundings 1 (1995): 5-18.