Thursday 15th September 2022 , 2-4 pm, Keynes Library, Birkbeck
A talk about the Universidad de la República, Uruguay with Birkbeck School of Arts Honorary Research Fellow Prof Ana Laura López de la Torre
This was an in-person event.
This event will also be a fund raiser for the UCU Birkbeck Hardship fund, so please bring cash for the food stall!
The event is hosted by Dr Sophie Hope in collaboration with UCU Birkbeck and Birkbeck Interdisciplinary Research in Media and Culture (BIRMAC).
About the event:
The Universidad de la República is the public university of Uruguay. Founded in 1849, it enrols over 150 thousand students annually. It offers free tuition at undergraduate and postgraduate level in all disciplines and fields of knowledge. Although fully funded by the state, the autonomy of the university’s governance was enshrined in a national law in 1958 following 20 years of organised action by students.
All academic activity is organised under 3 essential functions: teaching, research and extensión. This last function – loosely translated as ‘outreach’ – is a distinctive element of the Latin-American university movement. Extensión mandates public universities to serve society and the public good. Over the years, the way this has been interpreted and put in practice has changed alongside ideas of democracy, equality, social justice and inclusion. Today, ‘critical extensión’ is a complex field of theoretical and methodological innovation, connected to the fields of critical pedagogy, southern epistemologies and decolonial thought.
