Where do you get your educational passion from?
My educational passion is rooted in witnessing students being genuinely interested in the world and hungry for knowledge. Whenever I spot that magic spark in the eyes of students who ask questions and try to get to the bottom of (unequal) social power relations, I feel motivated. Apart from this, I am also thriving on students taking the effort to get back to me after a course or a supervision trajectory, and thanking me for what they have learned, or picking up on a conversation or a theme that passed review during class and that triggered new questions.
What do you hope to pass on to students?
I strive to open up new frontiers in the intellectual curiosity of my students with regards to the various power asymmetries and unequal distribution of wealth in global capitalism, and the ideational and institutional strongholds that (re-)create these asymmetries. I hope to challenge students to go beyond the trodden paths and explore underexplored dimensions of social reality, notably by deconstructing power relations that revolve around ‘who produces, what, when, where and how’, and in extension ‘who owns or controls the surplus that is being created’, and ‘why’. I hope to help students to navigate the material connections between theoretical abstractions and real-world phenomena. I hope to facilitate a dynamic learning environment where students feel empowered to challenge existing theories and knowledge claims.
What did you learn from your students?
Teaching is by definition a dialectical and thus a transformative process for all parties involved. While I follow the Marxist credo ‘De omnibus dubitandum’ - we should always have doubts about everything - I am continuously also learning from my students who approach theories, and also critical theories, and knowledge claims, with a healthy scepticism, point to blind spots or question my own taken-for-granted positions. Over time, I have learned to show intellectual humility and allow for a teaching environment that goes beyond the conveyance of knowledge and that is open to re-examination and contestation. Academic inquiry is never settled or finished but always evolving, and we always have to ‘re-search’ our answers. After all, if everything was as it appears on the surface, there would be no need for science.
What teaching moment has always stayed with you?
Several years ago, I was brought in as a supervisor for a PhD project on the brink of termination. The candidate was struggling against institutional resistance to approach her research from a critical perspective, ending up deeply demoralized and also intimidated.
Joining as supervisor constituted a delicate challenge: I had to establish trust and a supportive intellectual environment where academic critique, including my own substantive feedback on her work, could flourish, while at the same time encourage her to emancipate herself vis-à-vis all her supervisors. My goal was to help her find her voice and scholarly independence, but also to listen to critique and develop confidence to defend her perspective.
Not only did she successfully defend her dissertation, but her work was subsequently published by a renowned academic publisher. She dedicated the book to me, recognizing my mentoring role in her academic journey,which has been the most profound and meaningful moment of my career. It made me realize that probably our most important contribution as scholars is empowering others to dismantle intellectual barriers and feel confident to contribute with their critical perspectives.
What would you like to try out again in your teaching?
I would like to revisit incorporating radical feminist political economy contributions from the 1970s into my curriculum, particularly engaging students with seminal texts from scholars like Silvia Federici, Maria Mies, Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Angela Davies, who provide powerful frameworks for understanding how capitalism has historically relied on gendered and racialized divisions of labour, arguing that unpaid domestic work, care labour, and reproductive labour provide the ‘conditions of possibility’ without which capitalism would cease to exist. Especially in the current political climate where such perspectives are once more increasingly under attack, it is important to revisit these foundational critiques and draw parallels to contemporary manifestations in global supply chains, platform economies, and care work organization, and explore persistent patterns but also new dynamics in how gender and race structure power relations in global capitalism.