“Academic practice and public engagement through the lens of Hannah Arendt’s public sphere of action” – Dr Margaret Meredith

an important part of public engagement is to create spaces of interaction between people from different backgrounds and perspectives with the aim of identifying issues for collaborative enquiry and fostering transformed understandings around such issues.

– Dr Margaret Meredith (2)

This paper by Dr Margaret Meredith contributes to conceptualisations of public engagement as an important facet of academic practice by drawing on Hannah Arendt’s work on action in the public sphere, exemplifying this with the specific case of an international conference.

Arendt’s idea of action is therefore highly appropriate to renewing and transforming our understanding of issues in which there are potentially many perspectives and where there is no ‘right answer’, but rather the complexity of many understandings, epistemologies, purposes and practices manifested.

– Dr Margaret Meredith (3)

Dr Meredith’s article can be downloaded here.