Mario Novelli

Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. This book provides a critical reflection on the relationship between education, conflict, war and peace and the global actors and practitioners that have devised strategies to engage and support education systems in conflict-affected contexts. Exploring a wide range of issues from development assistance to education, peacebuilding, de-radicalisation programmes and global governance, it evidences the challenges and the promises of education’s complex relationship to war and peace. The book highlights the field’s entanglements with geopolitics and imperial interventions, which have shaped its actions and undermined and limited its potential to support social transformation towards peace with social justice.

'Outstanding ... This book is a must-read for scholars and activists interested in the impact of grassroots knowledge-making on individuals, institutions and society' Rebecca Tarlau, author of Occupying Schools, Occupying Land 'In social movements, people [learn how to] re-imagine their worlds. This powerful and inspiring book shows that movement education is not a luxury but a central part of effective struggle' Laurence Cox, author of Why Social Movements Matter Laboratories of Learning proves, through exploring inspiring social movements around the world, that the education and knowledge-making happening inside these movements is crucial for the future of social justice for all. It asks three simple but profound questions: How do movements learn and make knowledge? What kinds of knowledge do movements make? And what is its effect on individual activists, movements and even whole societies? Written in collaboration with leading activists from different movements in Turkey, Colombia, Nepal and South Africa, each case shows that these activists in the Global South can offer exciting insights into the myriad of ways that movements learn and produce knowledge as they struggle for a better world. Designed to inspire and innovate, Laboratories of Learning is an opportunity for activists to learn new, ground-breaking ideas, born out of moments working at the intersection of theory and practice, pushing the boundaries of new thinking and the limits of the possible.