Community

DPR Community

The DPR Community was launched at the 2010 conference DPR9: Trust held at the University of Greenwich by that institution’s Deputy Vice Chancellor, Neil Garrod. The Community is an informal network associating colleagues (lecturers, policy-makers, researchers and students) interested in the concerns for which DPR has become known. The Community has no formal membership, fees, rules or other apparatus, but is intended to promote joint research and publication, particularly through the DPR book series and the journal Power and Education.

Jerome Satterthwaite

DPR in the UK is now into its second decade. DPR has evidently resonated with the times, since the conferences have always been well attended and have attracted an impressive range of speakers. The conference has an increasingly international appeal: in 2010 there were delegates from 29 nations. DPR came into being to challenge and critique  what is going on in the Academy – particularly in the Humanities, and specifically in Education; but the conference and its publications have never kept within these bounds, as the list of keynote speakers and titles shows. From the beginning it has been our central focus to counter the silencing and distortion of marginalised and resistant voices: talking truth, confronting power (the title of our book in 2008). The convenor of DPR UK is Jerome Satterthwaite.

 

Jennifer Lavia

In Trinidad, The University of Trinidad and Tobago (UTT), through its School of Cognition, Learning and Education, along with the University of Sheffield, the Eric Williams Memorial Collection, the Folk Research Centre of St. Lucia, as well as Discourse Power and Resistance (DPR) UK, presented the first DPR Caribbean Conference - "Massa Day Done!?" Challenges of Decolonizing the Postcolonial Experience at the UTT Valsayn Campus during the period of 19-20 July, 2010. Further information is here. The convenors of DPR Caribbean are Jennifer Lavia and Laurette Bristol.

 

Laurette Bristol

In July 2010 I had the pleasure of being on the organising committee for the DPR Caribbean 2010 Conference. It was hard work all the way through from beginning to end. The process of planning and execution was one that left me not only growing as an event planner, but it also contributed to my development as a team player, negotiator, problem solver and Caribbean intellectual.

We have so many to say thank you to, the participating institutions, in particular, The University of Trinidad and Tobago (UTT) who has participated in the construction of history by choosing to be a pioneer for early career Caribbean intellectuals; the members of the organising committee, who stuck it through from conception to implementation; the caterers, in the Caribbean an event is measured the tastiness of the food! Well done! The participants who made this a dream come true; the keynote speaker who provided the intellectual stimulus over the two days and to…. wait for it…. God! This would not be a true Caribbean piece (or experience) without an acknowledgement of Him! Thank you guys and see you all in two years!!!!

 

Sechaba Mahlomaholo

In South Africa a conference, strongly related to DPR, entitled Education for Social Justice was held from September 29 to 30, 2010 at the University of the Free State in South Africa. From the 110 papers that were presented at the previous year’s conference 20 were selected for publication in the volume Praxis towards sustainable empowering learning environments. The convenor of DPR South Africa is Sechaba Mahlomaholo.

 

Kamila Kaminska

In Wroclaw, Poland colleagues are working together to organise a DPR conference early in 2011, along with a support group of academics  in educational sciences, linguistics, sociology and philosophy from the University of Wroclaw, the University of Gdans, the University of Poznan, the Wroclaw Academy of Sport, the University of Lower Silesia and the Medical Academy in Poznan, together with NGO workers, a graffiti artists group and others. They have the support of Profesor Tomasz Szkudlarek, a leading Polish intellectual from the University of Gdansk. The proposed DPR initiative will be discussed in December at a Conference on Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) – a major academic network of 20 leading university of Poland academics. The DPR convenors are Kamila Kaminska, Margaret Ohia and Mariusz Gaj.

 

Mark Vicars

Melbourne, Australia

The first Australian Discourse, Power, Resistance (DPR) conference, Politicizing Higher Education: Critical Research is to be held in Cairns on the 25th, 26th and 27th August 2011, supported by AQR (Association for Qualitative Research Australia ). AQR is committed to promoting innovative debate around ways of ‘doing’ qualitative research and is passionate to contribute and initiate discourse  around new approaches to the ‘doing’ of research.  The DPR ‘down under’ conference will  reconsider how  qualitative research practices are increasingly situated  and contested in Australian Higher Education domains and promises to be an exciting event that will unite scholars, practitioners and researchers from across Australia with the emerging DPR community in the United Kingdom, South Africa, the Caribbean and Poland. Delegates will have the opportunity to focus on how critical research methodologies can be utilised to rethink how knowledge is constructed, represented, disseminated  and valued within Higher Education. The Australian 2011 DPR Conference will promote critical discussion around contemporary approaches and promises provocative conversations around the possibilities for re-imagining the ‘proper’ and ‘improper’ ways of being in, and doing, academic work within Higher Education institutions in Australia.

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For further information, or to add suggestions or offer contributions to the DPR Community, please contact Jerome Satterthwaite at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.