The (im)possible university

In her inaugural lecture, Suzanne Hall engages with what it means to learn and teach at this volatile point in the lifespan of the UK university ecosystem. Hall locates the university in the intersection of sustained state underinvestment, the expansion of student indebtedness and the cost of living crisis, and systemic inequalities that fundamentally reconstitute university life. At the core of this lecture is a claim to space: an assertion of the university as a vital threshold for the everyday interruption and transgressive disruption of normalcy. Focusing on the threshold as the practice of entering into another space, Hall connects the collective acts of risking, caring and transforming, to insist on the possibilities of learning and teaching together.