This year, we gathered at Engelnest and on the Off University Moodle for our biannual meeting and General Members Assembly on September 14th. In this hybrid meeting, we discussed the focus of our activities, who we want to reach, and how to bring financial sustainability for our collective efforts to create A University Without Borders.
At the end of these discussions, we collectively decided the priorities for Off University until next year’s General Assembly:
- We will continue to offer online courses in the spring term and expand our range of non-English courses. By autumn at the latest, we want to be able to launch a call for new courses to respond to the emergencies of at-risk scholars. We are committed to research-based learning and will intensify our efforts to implement this approach in all learning activities.
- Our research pillars of Critical Peace Studies, Gender Studies and Re-thinking the University remain important. A cross-cutting theme is our efforts to draw inspiration from the arts as a methodology in research, in teaching and the dissemination of knowledge.
- Our contributions to building a network of peace activists and peace scholars in Turkey are a high priority for us.
- In the coming year we will further explore our possibilities to create or contribute to an archive of displaced and endangered knowledge, perhaps in combination with open access and community publishing
During the General Assembly, 26 members elected a board of three trustees the members of our ethics committee and our two internal auditors for the forthcoming year, Also elected was a group of five volunteers to shadow and support the board to ensure diversity and collective work. We warmly welcome our newly elected board members, Tuba İnal Çekiç as Chair, Serra Özhan-Hocaoğlu as Treasurer, and Mohamad Moustafa Alabsi as Secretary. Julia Strutz was assigned to be the Executive Director.
Following the meeting, the office staff and the chair of Off University went to a team retreat to continue with the discussions that started in the meeting, to kick off the working programme of 2024/25, and energise for another year of resisting against authoritarian regimes and creating a learning environment that generates solidarity.
