Knowledge democracy, transformation and higher education: elements of contestation

Thursday 25 April 2013, 6.30 pm
183 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BE

Professor Budd Hall is Co-Chair of the UNESCO Chair in Community-Based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education, and a Professor of Community Development in the School of Public Administration at the University of Victoria. Budd was the founding Director of the University of Victoria Office of Community-Based Research and is a Senior Fellow in the Centre for Global Studies at the University of Victoria. Former Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria, Budd Hall has served as the Chair of the Adult Education Department at the University of Toronto from 1995-2001, and as Secretary-General of the International Council for Adult Education.

Budd has worked in Nigeria, Tanzania, Venezuela, Brazil, Chile, Germany, Thailand, Yemen, Uganda, England, and the United States. He has done both theoretical and practical work for almost 40 years in various aspects of community-based adult education and learning and participatory research. He has served as President, Chair or Vice-President of the Canadian Association for the Study of Adult Education, International Council for Adult Education, Canadian Network for Democratic Learning, the Canadian Commission for UNESCO and the Coady International Institute Advisory Board. 

He is also a poet.

Professor Hall's talk is titled: Knowledge democracy, transformation and higher education: elements of contestation. In his talk, based on the premise that, over the past five years "confidence that a 'one size fits all' global economy and that the 'Western canon' of knowledge are sufficient to see humanity through the next phase of its transformations and adjustments has diminished dramatically", Professor Hall will consider what challenges to the dominance of traditional knowledge could mean for the future of higher education and social responsibility. He will discuss the emergence of numerous approaches to the co-creation of knowledge (i.e between community or social movement groups and academics) and the challenges that brings to the world of higher education.

The event is free to attend, but we require that you register online via Eventbrite.

Please click this link to watch a clip from Professor Hall's presentation, this link to listen the talk, and this link for photographs of the event.