The session will be a dialogue between political scientist and educator María do Mar Castro Varela (Berlin), who addresses resistance and desire, critical education and decolonisation, and philosopher Nikita Dhawan (Innsbruck), who research extends to issues of global equity and transnational feminism. The Night School invites the two theorists to share their perspectives on knowledge, and thoughts on an education that is oriented towards change and fairness.
María do Mar Castro Varela is a professor of General Pedagogy and Social Work at the Alice Salomon Hochschule, Berlin. She is a psychologist, an educator, and has a doctorate in Political Science. She is the head of the educational lab “Resistance and Desire”.
Her publications include Unzeitgemäße Utopien. Migrantinnen zwischen Selbsterfindung und Gelehrter Hoffnung (2006); Migrationspädagogik (2010); Postkoloniale Theorie. Eine kritische Einführung (co-author, 2015, 2. edition); and Die Dämonisierung der Anderen. Rassismuskritik der Gegenwart (co-editor, 2016). She has completed visiting fellowships with the Institut für die Wissenschaften des Menschen, Wien (2015/16); Universidad de Costa Rica (2013); Institute for International Law and the Humanities, The University of Melbourne, Australia (2013); University of La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain (2011); Pusan National University, South Korea (2011)
Nikita Dhawan is a professor for Political Theory, Women and Gender studies, and head of the inter-faculty research platform Gender Research: Identities – Discourses – Transformations at the University of Innsbruck.
Her publications include Impossible Speech: On the Politics of Silence and Violence (2007); Decolonizing Enlightenment: Transnational Justice, Human Rights and Democracy in a Postcolonial World (Editor 2014); Global Justice and Desire: Queering Economy (Co-Editor 2015); Negotiating Normativity: Postcolonial Appropriations, Contestations and Transformations (Co-Editor 2016), Difference that makes no Difference: The Non-Performativity of Intersectionality and Diversity (Editor 2016).
Among her international fellowships have been at the Universidad de Costa Rica (2013); Institute for International Law and the Humanities, The University of Melbourne, Australia (2013); Program of Critical Theory, University of California, Berkeley, USA (2012); University of La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain (2011); Pusan National University, South Korea (2011); and Columbia University, New York, USA (2008).