Workshop Report – Struggles for Hope

26.08.2022

Currently a lot of people are looking for hope in the midst of crises. A workshop on this topic was held at the FGCSS on April 7th & 8th. The collected results from the event are available now.

The online workshop brought together young researchers from different disciplines and different universities to assess the individual and collective strategizing of actors in crises. "Future-making practices in times of crises reveal a paradox: they can either fuel or erase hope and utopian imaginaries for alternatives and improvement."  This phenomenon was discussed and negotiated in a total of six panels at the workshop.

The results were written up in a report by Norina Fischer, Shaden Sabouni & Tom Scheunemann. 

Workshop schedule

Panel 1: Hope and Transformation in Everyday Struggles
Anna-Sophie Hobi (Norwegian University of Life Sciences): Recharging for Tomorrow: On Building Norway’s Battery Futures
Thembi Luckett (Newcastle University): Reproductive and Transformative Hopes in Everyday Life in a Coal Frontier
Corinna Land (Fulda University of Applied Sciences and Ruhr University Bochum): Hope and the Neoliberal State: Struggles over Rural Futures
Panel 2: Hope and Transformation in Struggles over Migration
Stephan Liebscher (Freie Universität Berlin): From Hope to Transformation. Platform Politics in the Movements of Solidarity City and Safe Habour
Jasmin Behrend (Goethe University Frankfurt): Activism in the Contested Border Area between France and Italy: Care-Practices and their Transformative Potential
Panel 3: The (Un)making of Belonging in the Past, Present and Future
Andrea Priori (Fulda University of Applied Sciences): Conservative Utopias: Prefigura-tion and Islam among Italian-Bangladeshi Youth
Prajwal Gaikwad (University of Hyderabad): Envisioning Future: The Forms of Hijra Identity Assertion in Contemporary India
Panel 4: Decolonial Utopias in the Anthropocene
Anja Habersang (Fulda University of Applied Sciences, Ruhr University Bochum, and University of Kassel): Decolonising Utopia - Indigenous Women Struggling for the Art of Living
Friederike Teller (University of Applied Arts Vienna): Which Narratives help us en-counter and challenge the Anthropocene within the Pluriverse?
Andrea Silva-Tapia (Justus Liebig University Giessen) and Sebastian Garbe (Fulda University of Applied Sciences): With Dignity towards a Plurinational Chile - Struggles for Hope beyond Coloniality and Neoliberalism
Panel 5: Student’s Life Projects in Times of Crisis 
Norina Fischer (Fulda University of Applied Sciences): The Dynamics of Imagined Futures in Face of Crises: The Case of German-Jordanian University Students
Elis de Aquino (Freie Universität Berlin): Suspended Futures? Building Life Projects in Times of Crisis: The Case of University Students from Rio de Janeiro’s outskirts
Panel 6: Children’s Struggles over Rights and Recognition 
Sannaki Munna (University of Hyderabad): Between Struggle and Hope: Orphan Rights in India
Nadine Benedix (Technical University of Darmstadt): Between Normative Disputes and Struggle for Recognition: The Agency of Organised Working Children 

Foto: Adobe Stock/Ivelin Radkov - stock.adobe.com