Please join our seminar series focused on student solidarities with Palestine, organised by the Political Geography Research Group (PolGRG) of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG):

Many of the students and activists in the encampments are demanding disclosure, divestment, and acknowledgment of their university’s role in supporting the ongoing genocide in Gaza. All 12 universities of Gaza have been physically destroyed; academics and their students have been killed, including in targeted attacks; and infrastructures of learning such as schools, libraries, archives, museums and heritage sites have been obliterated.

This seminar series provides a space for discussion about the student encampments that have grown in number across campuses in solidarity with Palestine and calling an end to the war in Gaza. These seminars will discuss the political spaces these encampments open up, how we do politics in times of war and genocide, and how we think about the space of the university.

Student camps have arisen on university campuses to create a political response to the war in Gaza that is not present elsewhere and have become crucial spaces to think through how and where we do politics. Yet many of the students who are part of these encampments have been met with violent resistance by universities. The violence inflected upon students by university management signifies the increasing securitization and militarization of university campuses that seeks to weaponize the language of safety, limit freedom of speech, and target students who peacefully protest.

In light of these events, PolGRG is organising a seminar series to provide spaces for discussion about these student protests. Over three online events, with invited speakers, there will be an opportunity to generate discussion around these student camps, to think through the different ways we might understand the political geographies of these camps, but also what they mean for broader questions about what universities are for, the securitization of university spaces, and geography and responsibility.

Seminar 1: Global Solidarities.

September 17th 1pm-2.30pm BST. Online. Sign up here.

This first seminar will be focused around those taking part in student protests in solidarity with Palestine – incorporating perspectives from Europe, UK, Ireland, and North America. Conversations will consider what global solidarity means, how universities are handling these protests differently, and what the increased militarisation and securitization of university spaces means.

Seminar 2: Histories of student protests.

November 27th 1pm-2:30pm. Online. Sign-up here.

This second seminar will look beyond the current Palestine student protests to think through the histories of student protests and how they are used in times of war and as spaces of alternative politics. This includes a consideration of how an escalation of violence in the current Palestinian solidarity encampments is or is not an escalation from previous militarized responses to anti-war protests (e.g. Vietnam).

Seminar 3: Camps as spaces of geopolitical possibility.

Date TBC.  Sign-up link to be announced later.

The third seminar will focus on the role of student encampments as strategic spaces and space for negotiation. Discussion will include what political possibilities camps open up and close down, how camps can be tools to negotiate divestment, and the role of social media in creating portrayals of the camps beyond their physical space.