Krystian Szadkowski took part in the “The Purpose of the University. Philosophy of Higher Education Conference” at Aarhus University, Denmark (November 6-8, 2017).

The conference was organized by the Centre for Higher Education Futures

He had a presentation on “Political Ontologies of the University: the Public and the Common“. The abstract is available here.

The presentation provided an exposition of the concept of the common in higher education and mapped its relations with the widely discussed concept of the public. The common is the most neglected aspect of the higher education and this has fundamental consequences for the shape and the course of the politics of and within the university. Based on an extensive literature review this paper offers a non-dualistic ontological framework (private/public/common) for understanding the dynamics of glonacal higher education. However, its main focus is placed on the pair of the public/common. The inquiry is informed by the contemporary political economy of knowledge production and the processual approaches to understanding of the common in political philosophy.