The Baltic Sessions

What an incredible plenary session at the 14th International Critical Management Studies Conference and what a privilege to host the Baltic Session live from the Naimos Radical Arts & Community Centre in Manchester!

To our brilliant panel of speakers, thank you for your insight, honesty, and commitment to imagining radical futures in Higher Education:
✨ David Knights
✨ Laura Columbo
✨ Steven Jones
✨ Amal Abdellatif
✨ Greg Bamber
✨ Alexandra Bristow
🎤 Chaired by David Jones
🙌 Supported by Research Assistant Muhammed Karayagli

A huge thank you to everyone who joined us in person and online. If you’d like to host or contribute to a future Baltic Session, message us or visit our website. More exciting sessions coming in the next semester!

Hi folks,

Delighted to announce the fourth Baltic Session of this year will be live streaming from the opening plenary of the 14th International Critical Management Studies Conference (ICMS), hosted by Manchester Metropolitan University. It will take place from 11.00-13.00 UK time on Wednesday, 18th June.

This Baltic panel Session follows on from last year’s panel Baltic Session which took place at Newcastle Football Stadium – endeavouring to explore from a diverse academic perspective, the agentic possibilities and pathways towards an enactment of a critical future for HE (dis)organising. Quite a challenge hey? The task ahead of the ICMS community and wider academic community is an urgent one and requires not only a dialogical imperative around critical theories around the problems of HE, but a collective understanding of how we can contest the current managerialist hegemony of targets, mediocrity and ‘bullsh*t’ practices, all apparently in the name of productivity and growth. This isomorphic singular journey has an emerging institutional face-saving bedfellow, a growing virtue signalling mask of wellbeing, sustainability and EDI metrics. Such pursuits are laudable but are organised within the overarching bureaucratic, auditable mire (accreditations, frameworks and goals) of never quite realising the neoliberal, competitive ‘excellence’ project (league tables/ rankings). The cracks are certainly beginning to show (or engulf us) in the sector and the ICMS community has an opportunity to show its teeth (beyond critique) to this broken doxa. One can see hopelessness with the vested interest hurdles being so high, but also a great deal of hope as the theoretical and empirical justification is on such shaky ground. Bear with me, taking this hopeful contestation forward, the session will draw together leading proponents of alternative HE futures from the ICMS community, to explore the possibility of regenerating critical theories and praxis that tackle systemic, local and global socio-economic-political-ethical challenges. The regenerative, activist theme of the ICMS conference provides some clues to the possibilities and pathways for a critical HE future highlighting the need to open up critical management ‘scholarship’ in an interdisciplinary fashion. It is this focus on reforging scholarship, which is urgent to not only contest, but to be prefigurative and assertive of our diverse academic voices, which have been increasingly silenced.

This joint Baltic Session and ICMS panel provocation session aims to hopefully beyond dystopic problem framing and simplistic, extrapolative organising solutions towards deconstructing and reconcructing the social-political-cultural -physical space and place of our universities and sector.

Hi folks, it was wonderful to had so many great comments about it. Thanks once again!

Next, ICMS conference will host the Baltic Sessions on 18th June at 11.00-1.00 (UK Time), please save the date on your calendar now 😊

Please tune in at 1.30 pm today for a fruitful conversation!

Meeting link: https://lnkd.in/e3VGa8hj
Microsoft Teams
Meeting ID: 327 524 827 578 9
Passcode: a34kg3Jm

Hi folks, welcome to the third of this year’s Baltic Sessions to take place online, broadcast live to the Baltic Sessions’ international audience. It will be an exceptional panel of current and former Vice Chancellors, Presidents, and thought leaders in higher education from the UK, Switzerland, Spain, and the US.

This session will explore a bold and timely provocation call for a radical rethinking of the role and leadership of higher education (HE) institutions to collectively assert a renewed, courageous, and values-driven purpose for higher education. There is a plea for a “tempered radicalism” among HE leadership to find their activism to move beyond their institutional self-interest and to come together regionally, nationally and internationally for the sake of the sector.

Please do tune in if you are passionately caring about your sector and profession and love the idea of what it could be, rather than purely dealing with what it is.

🗓 Wednesday, 14th May 2025
🕜 13:30–15:00 (UK Time)
📍 Online via MS Teams

Hi folks, welcome to the third of this year’s Baltic Sessions to take place online, broadcast live to the Baltic Sessions’ international audience. It will be an exceptional panel of current and former Vice Chancellors, Presidents, and thought leaders in higher education from the UK, Switzerland, Spain, and the US.

This session will explore a bold and timely provocation call for a radical rethinking of the role and leadership of higher education (HE) institutions to collectively assert a renewed, courageous, and values-driven purpose for higher education. There is a plea for a “tempered radicalism” among HE leadership to find their activism to move beyond their institutional self-interest and to come together regionally, nationally and internationally for the sake of the sector.

Please do tune in if you are passionately caring about your sector and profession and love the idea of what it could be, rather than purely dealing with what it is.

🗓 Wednesday, 14th May 2025
🕜 13:30–15:00 (UK Time)
📍 Online via MS Teams

Hi folks, Yesterday was marked by another great Baltic Session.

A big thanks goes to Martin Parker for the inspiring presentation and Q&A.

Thanks to those who attended in person or online.

Please stay tuned for the next one, 14th May!

Hi folks,

This is just a kind reminder for the Baltic Session, due to take place at the ‘Live Theatre’ in Newcastle, down by the Tyne River, on the 9th of April at 1.00 pm.

Prof. Martin Parker from the University of Bristol will come to talk about his new book (‘The Organization of Things: A Cabinet of Curiosities’) with Prof. David Jones.

We are really looking forward to seeing you in person in Live Theatre; the in-person invitation is at the end. However, if you cannot make it, you can still join online as the beauty of the hybrid event.

If you want to join online, please use the link below.

Microsoft Teams
Meeting ID: 382 394 748 296
Passcode: LE2xb9mg
Join the meeting now: bit.ly/teams-microsoft-com-joinmeeting

Eventbrite in person registration: bit.ly/eventbrite-the-organization-of-things-a-cabinet-of-curiosities

Hi folks,

This is just a kind reminder for the Baltic Session, due to take place at the ‘Live Theatre’ in Newcastle, down by the Tyne River, on the 9th of April at 1.00 pm.

Prof. Martin Parker from the University of Bristol will come to talk about his new book (‘The Organization of Things: A Cabinet of Curiosities’) with Prof. David Jones.

We are really looking forward to seeing you in person in Live Theatre, in-person invitation is at the end.

However, if you cannot make it, you can still join online as the beauty of the hybrid event. If you want to join online, please use the link below.

Microsoft Teams
Meeting ID: 382 394 748 296
Passcode: LE2xb9mg
Join the meeting now: https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/ap/t-59584e83/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fteams.microsoft.com%2Fl%2Fmeetup-join%2F19%253ameeting_Y2RjNWY5YjItYWI5OS00NDhlLWFmYTEtOGE3NDkzMjMyNTRl%2540thread.v2%2F0%3Fcontext%3D%257b%2522Tid%2522%253a%2522e757cfdd-1f35-4457-af8f-7c9c6b1437e3%2522%252c%2522Oid%2522%253a%25221e71c613-04db-4475-873f-043b765d609b%2522%257d&data=05%7C02%7Cmuhammed.karayagli%40northumbria.ac.uk%7Cd3f2fcd3817740dde41708dd75f9d008%7Ce757cfdd1f354457af8f7c9c6b1437e3%7C0%7C0%7C638796437964071914%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=Q3%2B3hVFPs%2BRLgPUgRhXAbwjwKEpk5En7o%2BwMYpgfk6E%3D&reserved=0

Eventbrite in person registration: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-organization-of-things-a-cabinet-of-curiosities-tickets-1295279207979?utm-campaign=social&utm-content=attendeeshare&utm-medium=discovery&utm-term=listing&utm-source=cp&aff=ebdsshcopyurl

Hi folks,

We will have a great Baltic Session on the 9th of April as hosting Prof Martin Parker who will talk about his new book ‘The Organization of Things: A Cabinet of Curiosities’, which came out a few months ago.

Please register from below for in-person attendance.

‘The Organization of Things: A Cabinet of Curiosities’ Martin Parker, Professor at the University of Bristol Business School, will try to present his new book, which came out a few months ago.