In this experimental piece of writing I want to think about the pedagogy of contact and the plight of the hikikomori or social recluse in Japan. I am interested in exploring how the hikikomori practices a kind of contactlessness or what I will call a deadly ipseity of desire. What does it mean to resist contact, to be without contact, to be…

This paper investigates the concepts of hope, despair and the radical imagination, driven by the following questions: Can we exist beyond the binaries of hope and despair, two key concepts that drive educational practices? What is the radical imagination and what are the conditions for it to be put to work in educational spaces? First, education…

This article addresses the problem of the quantification of higher education by introducing a theoretical framework for power relations and agency within this process. Instead of treating evaluation regimes as external and imposed on the sector, it argues for a relational approach to the problem of exercising power over the higher education sector…

Initial Teacher Education quality is often judged through the auspices of audit-style mechanisms designed to facilitate the identification of matters pertaining to the 'readiness' of student teachers to enter the world of the classroom as fully qualified. In this regard, quality of programmes is often determined by the knowledge and skills student…

In the midst of a crisis like the climate crisis and calls for "all hands on deck", what do academics, as a microcosm of humanity, see? In Hannah Arendt's terms, an "abyss of freedom" to act or a paralysing "abyss of nothingness"? Some from the academy themselves, including Tamboukou, Apple and Bourdieu, make…