MC: James Arvanitakis: Piracy as Method (workshop day 1, MC)

This Master Class thematically prepares the discussions of the second day’s workshop, which foregrounds the fluidity and strategic exploitation of the “production” and “distribution” of knowledge in general. To contextualize the more theoretical and methodological discussion that will take place on the second day, the master class focuses on two key aspects.

First, the master class links the discussion of academic language (definition, terminology, and the logic of inter- and intradisciplinary exchange) to the tangible situation of the university classroom as a situation that is always already heterogeneous and that, as a collective classroom experience, inherently relies on dynamics other than analytical rigor. The first part of the workshop will explore this already complex position of the academic classroom as an uneven space of collective interaction.

Second, the situation of the academic classroom is further complicated by the inclusion of educational spaces outside of, or at the fringes of, the academic classroom. This centrally concerns digital spaces of culture, information and education and their various roles as resources, complements, but also rivals to the academic classroom.

Prof. James Arvanitakis is a Professor in the Humanities at the University of Western Sydney and the Head of The Academy at UWS, a member of the University’s Institute for Cultural and Society, and a research fellow of the Centre for Policy Development. He has worked as a human rights activist throughout the Pacific, Indonesia and Europe. He is currently working with the Whitlam Institute looking at issues confronting Australia’s democracy. His research areas include hope, trust, political theatre, piracy and citizenship.

He is a renowned expert on academic teaching of students with extremely heterogeneous backgrounds, and has been awarded Australia’s most prestigious teaching award, the Prime Minister’s University Teacher of the Year Award (2012), for his innovative and inclusive teaching methods.

Prof. Arvanitakis will not only be able to introduce a particularly nuanced perspective on academic teaching and the academic classroom as a space contextualized by many factors, he is also a co-founder of PiracyLab, and will therefore be able to prepare the ground for the second day’s workshop’s methodological format and approach as an integral methodological part of the master class rather than as an additional, foreign element.

In this vein, this master class run by Prof. Arvantiakis centrally contributes to the methodological continuity of the workshop experience for all participants, while at the same time providing invaluable practical experience and methodological input for participants’ own future work as academic instructors.