Announcing a new book from NIACE: The most dominant voices for university engagement emanate from the USA, Australia and countries in Europe. Nevertheless, community engagement has a long tradition in African universities, although that tradition has been constrained by the fluctuating conditionalities of development funding agendas.

Please find below the call for papers for the next conference of the Between Global and Local: adult learning and development network, April 25-27, Ghent, Belgium. Deadline for submitting abstract is January 22:

Urban living and urban developments question increasingly the social and spatial conditions for living together. Urban developments can refer to changing social and spatial conditions within cities as well as in rural areas. In the latter case, this may involve a reflection on how urbanising trends and developments affect for instance local community traditions. In the current discourses, urban public space is on the one hand assumed to lack the conditions for the development of social cohesion, community life and citizenship. On the other hand cities are assumed to represent dynamic sites of social innovation and transformation. Recent changes in the social and spatial structure of cities increase the need to act and reflect upon the tensions in these ‘readings’ of community and urban developments.