Tuesday 27 March 2012
Democracy vs the fiscal treaty
There's a nice analysis of the politics of the crisis from the German Association for Critical Social Research here. An English version of the associated call is here.
Sunday 25 March 2012
IISH exhibition online
Just found the International Institute of Social History's 75th anniversary exhibition "Rebels with a cause" online here. The navigation isn't totally intuitive but once you work out how to move round the exhibition it has everything from handwritten posters from Paris in 1968 via underground Burmese newspapers to early 20th century Dutch vegetarian graphics. Classic.
Wednesday 21 March 2012
"What can I do?"
Really good post here from soundmigration about how people can respond to the crisis and make a "conscious break with co-dependency" on elites.
Sunday 18 March 2012
Who takes the CEESA masters?
In the first five years
of its existence CEESA has had 6 - 15 students a year, so it is a small and
quite intense group. We support the group process with induction events, the core
module around building a “community of praxis”, field trips, visiting speakers, interactive
classroom practices and a skilled team of radical educators.
The group (staff and students) is extremely
diverse, and as the title “Learning from each other’s struggles” suggests this
is a huge part of its richness – you get to spend a year with people who are
also struggling to bring about equality but starting from very different life
experiences, in very different movements and with very different tools. This
helps you put your own experience and practice into perspective and build very
different kinds of alliances starting from a respect for each other as
practitioners.
Our participants in
the first five years have come from Ireland north and south, Scotland, England, Norway, Iran, Egypt, Nigeria and the USA.
They have been involved in a huge range of movements - including the water charges struggle, GLBTQ advocacy, rural community development, trade unions, radical social centres, disability activism, feminism, community arts, migrant organising, adult literacy projects, alternative spirituality, community drugs work, interfaith encounters, working-class women’s organising, ecological direct action, anti-poverty campaigning, youth work, radical journalism, women’s refuges, popular / community education, service user advocacy, majority world development, running a homeless hostel, mental health advocacy, community gardening and more - very different in their approaches and issues but sharing commitments to real social change, the courage to reflect on and develop their own practice and a willingness to share with, listen to and learn from each other.
They have been involved in a huge range of movements - including the water charges struggle, GLBTQ advocacy, rural community development, trade unions, radical social centres, disability activism, feminism, community arts, migrant organising, adult literacy projects, alternative spirituality, community drugs work, interfaith encounters, working-class women’s organising, ecological direct action, anti-poverty campaigning, youth work, radical journalism, women’s refuges, popular / community education, service user advocacy, majority world development, running a homeless hostel, mental health advocacy, community gardening and more - very different in their approaches and issues but sharing commitments to real social change, the courage to reflect on and develop their own practice and a willingness to share with, listen to and learn from each other.
These exchanges sit
beside development of your own practice and project and engagement with wider political,
historical and theoretical perspectives as an integral part of the course
process - which participants say they sometimes find challenging but always
value and which they are keen to keep going long after the year itself ends.
Research and activism
Activist knowledge
exists in a creative tension with other forms of knowledge. Much of the best
contemporary social movements research is engaged research – work by activist
participants and / or work which is designed to support and develop movement
thinking, and CEESA staff and students benefit from this in many ways.
In November CEESA
staff and activist postgrads in Sociology organised the first social movements conference in Ireland for well over a decade, with 20 papers spanning everything from Rossport
to the Arab Spring, working-class community education to the World Social Forum
and SlutWalks to children’s rights.
This March the Council
for European Studies’ Social Movements Research Network (co-chaired by CEESA staff) is hosting a joint event with
Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society looking at the
relationships between the Arab Revolutions, anti-austerity movements in Europe and the Occupy! phenomenon. This event brings together 30 leading researchers
on these different movements (including people from Occupy Research, Boston College's Movements / media Research and Action Project, MIT Comparative Media, etc.) to explore this dramatic period in world history.
Early next month CEESA
students and staff as well as activist postgrads in Sociology will be taking
part in the “Alternative Futures and Popular Protest” conference, the annual
social movements conference in these islands (now in its 17th year).
This conference is a fundamental space for sharing knowledge between engaged
researchers working on social movements and counter-cultural projects of all
kinds.
Finally, in May the international
social movements journal Interface,
based at NUI Maynooth, brings out its 7th issue on the linked topics
of the Arab Spring and European anti-austerity movements. At time of writing
independent journalist Austin Mackell, his translator Ailya Alwi and US
postgrad Derek Ludovici are barred from leaving Egypt and facing trumped-up
charges carrying up to 7 years’ imprisonment linked to their attempt to
interview an Egyptian labour leader.
Each year CEESA
students design and carry out their own research projects, designed as
practitioner theses aimed at supporting and developing their own movements’
practice in a particular area. In doing this they are supported by these broader
links and networks of engaged research at what has become not only Ireland’s
leading centre of social movement studies but a key node in cutting-edge
international research in this area.
Monday 12 March 2012
MA funding 2012-3 news
The story so far...
Having decided that the country's number one economic priorities should be things like bailing out the bondholders of a private bank, handing over its main natural resources to multinationals, and enshrine austerity in perpetuity as an economic policy, the government has been "left with little choice" but to do things like shred the public sector to pay the price of private speculation, suck money out of the economy in order to help recovery, introduce a poll tax in the interests of equality and raise the costs of education in order to boost the knowledge economy.
All of this affects students, of course - the last one most visibly but the others at a broader level. What does it mean for you if you are interested in taking the MA CEESA next year? The basics are given here and an update here.
This post gives more details on levels of state funding and what the university will offer for postgraduates taking taught Masters degrees. The information here only applies to those who would have qualified for the old local authority grants (which are now being distributed by a central authority), in other words EU nationals resident in Ireland who fall below a certain family income.
For more information on funding for people not in this situation, see this page and follow the links.
An important qualification on all of this is that this is not an official information site on funding. It does do its best to make sense of a confusing situation but you will have to follow up yourself. We would encourage you to be persistent and not take no for an answer - and let us know anything you discover about how the rules are being applied this year.
From the state:
1. No maintenance grants will be paid for any new entrants from the 2012/13 academic year.
2. Full fees will still be paid for students with a family income of under €22703 and in receipt of one of a number of payments for the Dept of Social Protection. These students would previously have received maintenance support of €2375 per annum for postgraduate study. This will affect approximately 2000 prospective students nationally.
3. A further 4000 new students nationally, based on a means test, will receive a contribution of €2000 towards their postgraduate fees. Previously these students would have received a grant for full fees.
4. This will leave approximately 3000 students nationally who previously would have received a government grant of full fees, who in 2012/13 will have to pay those fees in full.
From the university:
Students who were in receipt of a local authority higher education grant for a final year of undergraduate study between 2008 - 12 can apply for a bursary offered by Maynooth. There are full details on the Graduate Studies website, but the essence is that there will be a small number of bursaries worth €2,000 for the students with the highest undergraduate results applying to any given department. There will also be a €1,000 prize, details to be announced soon.
What this means for you:
The previous "maintenance grant" was €2375 p.a., but the Irish state's visa requirements expect visiting students to "show evidence of €7,000" [sic] to prove that they can support themselves during their stay. In other words the most important part of the old grant was the fees element, which has been cut back but is still available, in whole or in part, to many students.
There is limited evidence, but it seems that even before this latest round of cuts few if any students doing masters degrees were surviving on the grant alone. Some are working, in the home or for supportive employers; some have scholarships or grants; some are surviving on their savings; and we do want to underline this for the sake of people who feel daunted by the new barriers the state is placing in front of them.
Despite all these difficulties which already exist, our students have included people from very disadvantaged backgrounds, international students and immigrants, mature students and unemployed people, long-term activists and people with major caring responsibilities, as well as people in more traditional student situations. It isn't easy for anyone - but it isn't impossible.
The MA CEESA is organised on a two-day basis (Monday and Tuesday) in order to help accessibility for people who have caring responsibilities, are in employment or heavily committed to social movements etc. This does not mean that the course only takes up two days of your time! It is a full-time course which takes up the equivalent of a full working week, so if you have substantial responsibilities the classroom time plus reading, assignments and project will leave you very little free time. But it can be done - and many people tell us that it actually creates a space for them to breathe and think outside of the everyday.
Of course this does not work for everyone; we are very conscious of the pressures people are facing in so many different dimensions, and as well as supporting people who are trying to change this situation we are also constantly asking ourselves how we can do things differently in terms of equality and accessibility. At least for now, this is the best we are able to offer with what we have. We hope you will be able to join us and have what many students describe as a transformative year.
Having decided that the country's number one economic priorities should be things like bailing out the bondholders of a private bank, handing over its main natural resources to multinationals, and enshrine austerity in perpetuity as an economic policy, the government has been "left with little choice" but to do things like shred the public sector to pay the price of private speculation, suck money out of the economy in order to help recovery, introduce a poll tax in the interests of equality and raise the costs of education in order to boost the knowledge economy.
All of this affects students, of course - the last one most visibly but the others at a broader level. What does it mean for you if you are interested in taking the MA CEESA next year? The basics are given here and an update here.
This post gives more details on levels of state funding and what the university will offer for postgraduates taking taught Masters degrees. The information here only applies to those who would have qualified for the old local authority grants (which are now being distributed by a central authority), in other words EU nationals resident in Ireland who fall below a certain family income.
For more information on funding for people not in this situation, see this page and follow the links.
An important qualification on all of this is that this is not an official information site on funding. It does do its best to make sense of a confusing situation but you will have to follow up yourself. We would encourage you to be persistent and not take no for an answer - and let us know anything you discover about how the rules are being applied this year.
From the state:
1. No maintenance grants will be paid for any new entrants from the 2012/13 academic year.
2. Full fees will still be paid for students with a family income of under €22703 and in receipt of one of a number of payments for the Dept of Social Protection. These students would previously have received maintenance support of €2375 per annum for postgraduate study. This will affect approximately 2000 prospective students nationally.
3. A further 4000 new students nationally, based on a means test, will receive a contribution of €2000 towards their postgraduate fees. Previously these students would have received a grant for full fees.
4. This will leave approximately 3000 students nationally who previously would have received a government grant of full fees, who in 2012/13 will have to pay those fees in full.
From the university:
Students who were in receipt of a local authority higher education grant for a final year of undergraduate study between 2008 - 12 can apply for a bursary offered by Maynooth. There are full details on the Graduate Studies website, but the essence is that there will be a small number of bursaries worth €2,000 for the students with the highest undergraduate results applying to any given department. There will also be a €1,000 prize, details to be announced soon.
What this means for you:
The previous "maintenance grant" was €2375 p.a., but the Irish state's visa requirements expect visiting students to "show evidence of €7,000" [sic] to prove that they can support themselves during their stay. In other words the most important part of the old grant was the fees element, which has been cut back but is still available, in whole or in part, to many students.
There is limited evidence, but it seems that even before this latest round of cuts few if any students doing masters degrees were surviving on the grant alone. Some are working, in the home or for supportive employers; some have scholarships or grants; some are surviving on their savings; and we do want to underline this for the sake of people who feel daunted by the new barriers the state is placing in front of them.
Despite all these difficulties which already exist, our students have included people from very disadvantaged backgrounds, international students and immigrants, mature students and unemployed people, long-term activists and people with major caring responsibilities, as well as people in more traditional student situations. It isn't easy for anyone - but it isn't impossible.
The MA CEESA is organised on a two-day basis (Monday and Tuesday) in order to help accessibility for people who have caring responsibilities, are in employment or heavily committed to social movements etc. This does not mean that the course only takes up two days of your time! It is a full-time course which takes up the equivalent of a full working week, so if you have substantial responsibilities the classroom time plus reading, assignments and project will leave you very little free time. But it can be done - and many people tell us that it actually creates a space for them to breathe and think outside of the everyday.
Of course this does not work for everyone; we are very conscious of the pressures people are facing in so many different dimensions, and as well as supporting people who are trying to change this situation we are also constantly asking ourselves how we can do things differently in terms of equality and accessibility. At least for now, this is the best we are able to offer with what we have. We hope you will be able to join us and have what many students describe as a transformative year.
Communiversity knowledge exchange forum
The very interesting "Praxis" group are organising a forum on alternative models of economic development for Monday 23rd April. More details here.
Limerick conference: Crisis, Austerity and Resistance
Call for Papers
The Limerick Marxism Reading Group holds its second conference on April 25-26 2012 at the University of Limerick. The event aims to facilitate the open development of left perspectives on the ongoing economic crisis. The transfer of public funds to banks, bondholders, speculators and developers has generated anger and protest, but as yet there has been little in the way of mass resistance. This years’ conference has been organised with the view to encouraging the development and dissemination of coherent left perspectives on all related issues, and a comradely environment for considering the possibilities for the development of a broad-based resistance in the coming years.
Speakers will include:
Kathleen Lynch (TBC), Andy Storey, Connor McCabe, Lee F. Monaghan, Kieran Allen, Helena Sheehan, Tom Turner, Terrence McDonough, Michael Taft, Marnie Holborow, Henry Silke and Tom O’Connor
Additional papers/talks relating to the following themes are particularly welcome:
• Ongoing campaigns and current forms of resistance
• The role of the media in the current crisis
• The gendered impact of austerity
• Historical perspectives
• The role of trade unions
• Prospects for left unity
Deadline for abstracts: March 30, 2012.
All proposals to be sent to limerickmarxistreadinggroup@live.ie
Papers/talks from activists are particularly welcome.
Proposals should include: Title, presenter's name and contact information, institution or other affiliation (if any), research interests, a short 50 word biography and a brief abstract (no more than 500 words)
The conference is kindly sponsored by the Irish Social Sciences Platform (ISSP), the Institute for the Study of Knowledge in Society (ISKS), the Department of Sociology, Department of History, and the Department of Personnel and Employment Relations, University of Limerick.
The Limerick Marxism Reading Group holds its second conference on April 25-26 2012 at the University of Limerick. The event aims to facilitate the open development of left perspectives on the ongoing economic crisis. The transfer of public funds to banks, bondholders, speculators and developers has generated anger and protest, but as yet there has been little in the way of mass resistance. This years’ conference has been organised with the view to encouraging the development and dissemination of coherent left perspectives on all related issues, and a comradely environment for considering the possibilities for the development of a broad-based resistance in the coming years.
Speakers will include:
Kathleen Lynch (TBC), Andy Storey, Connor McCabe, Lee F. Monaghan, Kieran Allen, Helena Sheehan, Tom Turner, Terrence McDonough, Michael Taft, Marnie Holborow, Henry Silke and Tom O’Connor
Additional papers/talks relating to the following themes are particularly welcome:
• Ongoing campaigns and current forms of resistance
• The role of the media in the current crisis
• The gendered impact of austerity
• Historical perspectives
• The role of trade unions
• Prospects for left unity
Deadline for abstracts: March 30, 2012.
All proposals to be sent to limerickmarxistreadinggroup@live.ie
Papers/talks from activists are particularly welcome.
Proposals should include: Title, presenter's name and contact information, institution or other affiliation (if any), research interests, a short 50 word biography and a brief abstract (no more than 500 words)
The conference is kindly sponsored by the Irish Social Sciences Platform (ISSP), the Institute for the Study of Knowledge in Society (ISKS), the Department of Sociology, Department of History, and the Department of Personnel and Employment Relations, University of Limerick.
Thursday 8 March 2012
2012 MA funding
General information about funding possibilities for people interested in taking CEESA next year are available here. This post is an update on grants and internal funding based on information provided by NUIM Graduate Studies office.
As most people probably know the government has cut funding to postgraduate students. What this means is that there will be no maintenance grant; however there should still be a grant for fees.
The threshold for eligibility has not yet been announced. It will hardly be higher than for the existing county council grants but it isn't yet clear if it will be basically the same or if it will be lower. There will be a new, centralised system for grants as of May 1st (which seems an inappropriate day for it somehow).
NUI Maynooth is looking at its own internal funding for Masters' students, which is at present very limited, and there should be an announcement over the next while. At present the main internal funding is the tuition bursary, which goes to the highest-ranked student (in terms of academic credentials) within the relevant department.
Details and updates are on the NUIM Graduate Studies website and the "Student Finance" site. We will also post updated information here as we get it.
In the meantime the most important facts are (a) the deadline for CEESA applications is April 30th; (b) if you are at all interested in doing postgraduate work next year you should register with PAC. It is a single €45 fee (which seemingly can be claimed back if you are on a grant etc.) that goes to run PAC, not the university, and entitles you to apply for any number of courses.
As most people probably know the government has cut funding to postgraduate students. What this means is that there will be no maintenance grant; however there should still be a grant for fees.
The threshold for eligibility has not yet been announced. It will hardly be higher than for the existing county council grants but it isn't yet clear if it will be basically the same or if it will be lower. There will be a new, centralised system for grants as of May 1st (which seems an inappropriate day for it somehow).
NUI Maynooth is looking at its own internal funding for Masters' students, which is at present very limited, and there should be an announcement over the next while. At present the main internal funding is the tuition bursary, which goes to the highest-ranked student (in terms of academic credentials) within the relevant department.
Details and updates are on the NUIM Graduate Studies website and the "Student Finance" site. We will also post updated information here as we get it.
In the meantime the most important facts are (a) the deadline for CEESA applications is April 30th; (b) if you are at all interested in doing postgraduate work next year you should register with PAC. It is a single €45 fee (which seemingly can be claimed back if you are on a grant etc.) that goes to run PAC, not the university, and entitles you to apply for any number of courses.
Wednesday 7 March 2012
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