The Publication and Film Initiative of the Ecoverisities Alliance aims to support an emergence of diverse voices, a multiplicity of perspectives and a wider experiential reflections from a variety of contexts and knowledge systems, through commissioning and disseminating new works related to the role of higher education and how we imagine and practice it in our communities.

In 2019, through an open call, 20 original texts and 4 new films were created, while an editorial collaborative was established to engage in a deep process of peer-to-peer review and profound dialogue with the authors.

We asked allies to imagine with us the future of spaces of higher education. What are the edges of knowledge and learning that we need to look at and experiment with more in our learning communities? What challenges and opportunities are we not seeing? We are happy to be releasing these pieces on our website, and to carry on our initiative during 2020.

The first contribution we ‘d like to share,The University of Full Catastrophe Learning from Zaid Hassan, seems particularly appropriate for this current moment, also responding to some questions urged in our new zoom series Learning with Covid-19 hosted by the EcoversiTEA initiative. The piece invites us to reflect on how we might collectively learn about complexity and systems-interdependence. Through his writing, Zaid asks why we continue to fail to make any real change and instead continue to proceed full steam with ineffective business-as-usual frameworks? He offers a simple, yet deeply layered image into what learning could (and should) look like if we wish to strategically engage with the profoundly complex and interconnected challenges facing the world. Beginning with an acutely attentive account of his self-determined trajectory that questioned authority and orthodoxies at every turn, he takes his sharp intellect that is steeped in empathy and challenges us to step outside of our schooled comfort zones to see what else might be possible…