Curating Learning Journeys

‘Through writing, and registering how writing is an ontological rather than an epistemic project of transformation, Strausz has taken us to an elsewhere within IR that the world needs more IR scholars to follow. This move is one that practices theory as an art of humility and of being utterly an ordinary human, a rare sight in a discipline obsessed with power, expertise and personal/professional exceptionalism.’

—shine choi, Co-Editor-in-Chief of International Feminist Journal of Politics

 ‘Prose, politics, poetics, possibilities... it is inspiring and aspirational.’

—Eric Selbin, Professor of Political Science, Southwestern University, USA

 ‘Strausz’s experimental book takes the reader on a journey, while opening up worlds of politics, care, resistance, and critical pedagogy. Writing otherwise unfolds in this well-crafted and epistemologically adventurous book as a strong practice for social transformation. Strausz’s “archipelago writing” does not shy away from wanderings and porousness and it asks vibrant questions about what it means to learn about learning.’

—Raluca Soreanu, Professor of Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex, UK

This open access book invites exploration into learning journeys as they unfold in, through and beyond the thinking space of a critically oriented postgraduate International Relations theory course. Drawing on the transformational potential of writing and creative research practice both in the classroom and the reflexive writing of this book, the project considers how we sense and make sense while navigating the lived experiences of academic study and world politics as asymmetrically positioned co-travellers. These embodied, experimental practices guide us in encountering and reshaping our relationships to self, others, and worlds – inspiring care, curiosity, and plural ways of knowing and being together in the field, contemporary higher education, and everyday life.

Erzsébet Strausz is Assistant Professor in the Department of International Relations at Central European University in Vienna.