Constructing Engagement: Geographical education for justice within and beyond tertiary classrooms

This paper reflects on experience as an educator, education bureaucrat, researcher and indigenous rights activist to frame significant challenges facing geographical education in the contemporary university and beyond. It argues that the process of constructing engagements between 'students' in diverse settings within and beyond the confines of the tertiary classroom and addressing the intellectual and practical consequences of 'deep colonising' of even quite progressive university programmes are critically important. Drawing on the work of Freire, Levinas, Rose and Derrida among others, the paper explores prospects for decolonising the geographical imagination that academic geography fosters.