Coordinators:
Meri Mononen-Matías (University of Helsinki)
Gabriel Cruz Ignacio (Teacher/Researcher, Oaxaca, Mexico; online coordinator)
Karolina Lehtola (University of Helsinki)

Description:
This working group continues the dialogue begun in Working Group 5, “Pedagogy of Resistance,” at DevDays2026. There, scholars and practitioners from seven countries across four continents identified epistemic and pedagogic sovereignty as a shared horizon of struggle. DevDays2027 calls for empowerment as collective power to transform structures rather than as individualized capacity-building. Education is where this distinction is most visible. The same classroom can train “human capital” for extractive economies, or it can sustain communities‘ capacity to define their own knowledges, languages and futures.

We understand educational sovereignty as the right and practice of people and communities to decide what is learned, how, by whom, and in relation to which territories. Indigenous peoples, peasant movements, grassroots teachers and popular educators in both the Global South and North are building such sovereignty from below. They often work in tension with state curricula, standardized metrics, and increasingly with platform-based and Al-driven education. 

We invite contributions on: 

• Indigenous, community-based and popular education as collective empowerment 
• Relational epistemologies and methodologies that center people and nature together, including land- based, intergenerational and community-rooted ways of knowing 
• Educators’ and communities’ struggles for educational sovereignty against state, market and digital control 
• Non-extractive, reciprocal research ethics and action research 

We particularly welcome contributions from Indigenous scholars, community educators, movement-based researchers, colleagues from the Global South, and early-career researchers. Alongside paper presentations, we will use roundtable and participatory workshop formats that create space for dialogue rather than one-way transmission.

Type of call:
Call for Papers and Participation

Participation mode: 
Hybrid session combining paper presentations, roundtable discussions, and participatory workshop activities. Particular attention will be given to enabling meaningful online participation by colleagues from the Global South.

Submission details:
Selected contributions will be invited to develop their work for a planned journal special issue.

Funding note:

Contacts: 
Meri Mononen-Matías, meri.mononen@helsinki.fi
Gabriel Cruz Ignacio, GAELTH7@gmail.com