Dear BFUers,
Ever wondered ‘WTF is a Free University anyway’? Ever thought that BFU couldn’t get much more meta? Come along to our next session, when we’ll explore the political potentials of free universities across time and space!
When: Thursday the 25th of June, 6.30 pm – 8.30 pm
Where: The carpark under the Westpac Bank, 89-91 Boundary St, West End.
The Speakers:
Laura Nelson is currently doing her PhD at Harvard University on the free universities of the 1960s and 1970s, exploring how student activists across the world posed critiques of traditional colleges and universities and created their own alternative models of learning. She is interested in the ways these learning experiments brought together literature, politics, art and philosophy. Before starting the American Studies program, Laura studied Literature and Education at Oxford University, where she was involved with multiple projects thinking about the public role of the humanities and the university.
Fern Thompsett might be better known to many as one of the founders and organisers of BFU. However, she spent 6 months last year travelling through Canada, the US and Mexico, interviewing other free university and radical education activists, from student strikers in Montreal to Zapatistas in Chiapas. She has since been writing on the potentials of free universities as radical anti-capitalist projects, and as hatcheries for alternative political imaginaries.
The session will include ample open discussion time.
As always, all free / all welcome. Hope to see you there!Cheers,
The BFU crew.
BFU in WestPac Car Park, West End