The Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity (AFSEE) programme’s key ethos is that inequality is not inevitable and that a better, more equitable world is possible. AFSEE envisions a future with robust alternatives to our current global economy and believes that equity can be achieved through bold, imaginative responses that are forged through collective action and aligned to values of fairness, commitment, curiosity, kindness and courage. AFSEE’s ultimate purpose is to support Fellows who are actively working to bring these alternatives to life.
To achieve these aims, AFSEE brings together research, education and practice, and seeks to create dialogue and collaborations among a range of different stakeholders, including activists, academics, practitioners, journalists, and policymakers to advance equity, while traversing professional and disciplinary boundaries.
Now that the programme has reached its 5 years mark it is time to examine and capture the learning and creativity that has come out of these interactions. This learning will be documented in collaboration with the AFSEE community consisting of over 120 professionals and growing. The learnings will inform AFSEE’s curriculum and its theory of change.
As part of this learning exercise, we will ask our community about their understandings and experiences of collaboration. Which factors have facilitated and hindered sustained collaboration while traversing the professional and disciplinary boundaries? Why do people collaborate and what do people perceive to be the value of collaboration in the joint quest to combat inequalities? What knowledge and outcomes are co-created that could not be created operating in silos?
Through this work, we will also grapple with questions of epistemic justice and the knowledge-power nexus, to acknowledge how inequalities of knowledge shape collaborations and the impact of interventions aimed at policy change and wider social transformation. Our learnings will lead to both practical and academic outputs that will inform AFSEE’s theory of change and that can be of use to the wider community of practitioners and scholars working on inequalities.
The AcPrac team consists of: Dr Armine Ishkanian (Project Lead), Dr Tahnee Ooms (Project Manager), Barbara van Paassen (Consultant/AFSEE Fellow), and Dr Branwen Spector (Research Assistant).
Our learnings will lead to both practical and academic outputs that will inform AFSEE’s theory of change and that can be of use to the wider community of practitioners and scholars working on inequalities.
