Doing (in) community: experiences of university integrality with women and dissi

Abstract

From a critical perspective, university outreach drives us to develop comprehensive educational practices articulated with teaching and research. This article reflects on various experiences of working with women’s groups and sex-gender dissidences, highlighting how the articulation between research and outreach, together with participatory methodologies, is essential for developing strategies and tools aimed at transforming conditions of inequality and oppression based on gender.

We present a chronology of different research and outreach projects, along with teaching experiences and socio-community practices embedded in our university work. Throughout these initiatives, women and dissidences generously opened their doors to the university, sharing their knowledge, practices, and everyday lives.

Recovering and placing these integral experiences of study-work-incidence into dialogue allows us to identify certain common interpretive traits. The strength of collectivity and the act of “doing community” shape a shared fabric, emerging to reinforce collective networks of learning, care, and resistance that function as trenches for organization, empowerment, and the development of autonomy.