MA in Community Education, Equality and Social Activism

national | education | press release Thursday December 08, 2011 21:03 by Laurence Cox - NUI Maynooth

Learning from each other's struggles

Practitioner masters for social movement activists and community / popular educators at NUI Maynooth

From the Land League to women’s liberation and from the Dublin Lockout to community activism, the struggle for equality and social change has been driven by social movements from below. Today, ecological campaigners have put climate change on the agenda, global justice activists have highlighted the crisis of neo-liberal capitalism and popular movements have changed the world from South Africa to Eastern Europe and from Latin America to the Arab world.

As austerity politics bites, cuts target the poorest communities and neo-liberal “business as usual” tries to set aside democracy and popular organisations, social movements are rethinking their strategies and communities are taking a hard look at their own understandings. What can we learn from each other’s struggles for equality and social justice -  and what do we already know about how to change the world?

This course brings together students who want to learn how to make equality and social justice into realities, with more experienced activists in community education and social movements looking for space to reflect on their own work, and a team of staff who are experienced teachers and researchers, community educators and social movement practitioners - to form a community of practitioners learning from each other’s experiences and struggles to create new kinds of “really useful knowledge” and develop alternatives.