This edited collection addresses the challenges for critically engaged research, teaching and scholarship on race and racism in a climate marked by sweeping changes in universities. Each chapter engages with debates about universities and ‘publics’, and the public orientation and reach of academic work. How do these factors play out in the work of scholars pursuing racial and social justice? What are the constraints of the marketised university or the bureaucratised political field or the celebrity-hungry arena of media culture? How can we use scholarly research and knowledge to create different and better meanings and outcomes in any of these places? With a focus on engaged and activist scholarship attuned to theory and practice, the chapters consider these issues in France, the UK, USA and Costa Rica. The chapters include discussions of teaching for social justice, collaborating and advocating for migrant and local communities and deploying scholarly knowledge in political work and the media.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.

Wojciech W. Gasparski is professor emeritus of humanities at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw. He now serves as a vice-rector for research at L. Kozminski Academy of Entrepreneurship and Management and is editor-in-chief of the Praxiology series. He has published numerous volumes and over three hundred articles and conference papers. Timo Airaksinen is professor of philosophy at the University of Helsinki and the vice president of the International Berkeley Society. He is the author of over two hundred and fifty publications in seven languages.