Being in shadow and light: academics in post/conflict higher education

Academia and its citizens, during periods of political violence and social conflict, are often overlooked. When attention is given, the focus tends to be on student activism, access to higher education, or curriculum development. The experiences of academics affected by conflict remain under-researched, despite the crucial role they play as educators and in generating, documenting, preserving and challenging knowledges. This is particularly concerning given that academics have−and continue to be−at risk as targets of sanction, persecution and oppression.

This edited volume seeks to address this gap by exploring, and evoking, the complexities of academic subjectivity, place and practice in contexts where intellectual and state authority are contested or in transition. It features contributions by academics, artists and memory activists who have stepped bravely outside of the parameters of their disciplines, with modes of enquiry and representation that include conversations, vignettes and case studies, critical ethnographies, oral life histories, interviews, poetry and collage. Within the ten chapters are consideration of conflicts within Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, England, Mexico, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, Palestine, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Syria and Venezuela.

Being in Shadow and Light encourages a deeper understanding of academics’ navigation of these difficult conditions. The authors’ insider-outsider positioning brings forth the richness of ways through dilemmas−of omission, trauma, displacement, inheritance, injustice, distortion, desire. Grounding the many social, cultural, economic, and epistemic politics within academia, troubles the enclosure of ‘conflict’ in politics at the grand level, as if only within the realm of interest for state and international actors. Against sanitising the uncertainties and particularities of being an academic figure, the authors reflect on the states and sites of conflict as spaces which shape living.

This work is a call to recognize, document and study the often-overlooked subjectivities and contributions of academics thinking and practicing within societies undergoing conflict(s) and in their aftermath. As such, it will be of interest to academics, students and staff working within universities, as well audiences interested in intellectuals and institutions in contexts undergoing change.