November 30 – December 3, 2023 – Athens
About Roots Winter School
Held annually in Athens, Roots Winter School (RWS) is a three-day progressive learning programme designed to cultivate hope, widen horizons, and catalyze action. RWS aims to push the boundaries of participants’ thinking, abilities, and imagination in order to foster a global society committed to the well-being of both people and the planet. The program integrates critical theory with real-world experiences through a multifaceted methodology. Our curriculum blends expert lectures, interactive workshops, and experiential learning sessions. To add depth to discussions and provide a well-rounded understanding of our yearly themes, we feature a diverse lineup of speakers, including leading academics, seasoned activists, and professionals. Alongside this, one of our key objectives is to amplify the program’s collective educational impact through encouraging mutual learning among attendees.
RWS23: Unseen Wounds – Uncovering the Layers of Violence
The Roots Winter School 2023 provided space for discussions around the systemic injustices committed by the Global North on the Global South. Rooted in exploitative systems, these injustices depict a world defined by power imbalances and structures that reproduce colonialism, imperialism, fascism, and patriarchy. Integral to the dialogue was the incorporation of degrowth, reminding us of the responsibilities of the Global North and inviting us to take systemic action. Highlighting different layers of violence, the RWS signified a common desire for radical change.
Programme Highlights
Roots Winter School 2022
RWS2022: European peripheries provided a space for encounter, mutual learning, experimentation and inspiration. It offerred a critical, interdisciplinary learning programme consisting of lectures, workshops, discussions and public events delving into questions, tensions and challenges regarding political, feminist, and LGBTQI+ resistance-building and fight for justice. Last year’s programme focused on the European periphery as a space of analysis, including Eastern and Southern Europe, along with the Balkans. Of course, this space exists only in relation to a core, which we consider the place of power, dominance, and prestige to which the periphery is subordinated. This dependency is vital for the core in the re-creation of its economic and political hegemony through resource transfer.
Open Event: The Tragedy of Eterosexuality in Global context:
Inter Alia invited everyone to an open lecture-discussion entitled “The Tragedy of Heterosexuality in Global Context” with the academic-author Jane Ward facilitated by Elena Olga Christidi and Nancy Papathanasiou, Scientific Directors and Co-founders, Orlando LGBT+.
Jane Ward is a queer feminist professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her latest book “The Tragedy of Heterosexuality” received great reviews and we are honored to have her with us as part of the Roots Winter School!
“The Tragedy of Heterosexuality,” published in 2020, invites us to rethink the old history of queer suffering vs heterosexual happiness, and actively reflect on own visions concerning love, sex, and relationships before embarking on the highway of heterosexuality. According to Ward, taking true ownership of straightness by straight people could change the harmful and oppressive culture that surrounds it, and help redefine it as something much more pleasurable, eliberating and joyful.
For the first time Jane Ward developed the ideas unfolding in the book from a Greek and European perspective.
See an extract of the discussion here: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cl_ieYUKHIf/
RWS22 Testimonials:
RWS23 Testimonials:
