Transformative Universities

In this context, the transformative and democratizing action that can be carried out from universities and other educational and scientific-technological entities, both public and those which are part of civil society, is definitely key. Even more, those actions that are oriented to the creation of shared spaces for exchange and strategic projection. Such is the meaning of this proposal: to generate from the WSFTE a space to share experiences and discuss challenges and proposals towards a common agenda of development of knowledge, innovations and technologies that contribute to economic transformation and democratization. 

In this sense, this proposal gathers outstanding backgrounds of different university teams and other academic centres throughout Latin America, Europe and other continents, which have been developing teaching, extension and research initiatives for a long time, together with the movements of the field of transformative economies, in particular, with organizations and networks of social and solidarity economy (SSE). Indeed, linked to these economies there is a diversity of valuable university and academic experiences in general, ranging from undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate education; research and knowledge building; innovation, social technologies or solidarity economy incubators; the development of extension, social responsibility or volunteer programs programmes; and academic networks or international cooperation projects. However, these initiatives are generally not predominant in the more institutionalized university or scientific-technical systems, but they are usually rather marginal with respect to the "academic mainstream" hegemonized by conventional economic perspectives.

 Thus, the WSFTE is presented as an extraordinary opportunity to generate that place of exchange and encounter, which points towards the construction of a common strategic agenda of transformative academic and higher education initiatives, aimed at strengthening economies, solidarity, feminism, and agroecologic goals. For this, a plan with the following actions is proposed:

1.    Presentation and acceptance of the proposal under the WSFTE;

2.    Elaboration of a synthetic document of the proposal and participatory call to university teams, networks and academic centres;

3.    Holding of a webinar previous to the June WSFTE event , as an international meeting and exchange place of the interested teams, teachers and researchers;

4.    Realization of a participatory workshop within the framework of the Barcelona WSFTE, in which, in addition to sharing the contributions and conclusions of the webinar, guidelines and proposals for a common schedule of transformation and democratization of academic and scientific-technical knowledge are projected.

To join or to receive information send an email to: univtrasf@mailfence.com