Degrowth PhD course 2024

What role does the growth paradigm play in today’s climate, biodiversity, and inequality crises?

In the spring of 2024, we ran a PhD course on “Degrowth and Socio-ecological justice across disciplines” at the University of Copenhagen, co-organized together with Rebecca Rutt and Nikoline Borgermann. After a whole set of lectures discussing degrowth thinking and the injustices caused by the capitalist growth paradigm in our economies, our ways of living and thinking, our public health and our legal system, the final session was about degrowth in academia.

It was a wonderful opportunity to discuss with the students the many crises that affect academia today: How does the capitalist growth paradigm prioritize profit over people in higher education? How does the managerial class restrict the freedoms of students, faculty and staff to determine how the university is run and what it is for? What are the colonial roots of the Western university system? What would a hashtag#postgrowth, hashtag#decolonial and hashtag#feminist university system look like?

Thanks to all the past lecturers, civil society reps and contributors to this wonderful course and to the students for their wonderful insights and inputs throughout all sessions.