The Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities, Skopje, with support from the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung Southeast Europe, is proud to announce the School for Politics and Critique 2021 – «Climate Justice in an Age of Unbridled Capitalism: Establishing a Unified Front Through Eco-socialism, Marxist Feminism and Critiques of Authoritarianism.» The School will take place between September 10-12, 2021, and will be held in a hybrid format, both online and offline, for those attending in person, the School will be held in Skopje, North Macedonia. We are excited to announce the following keynote speakers for this year’s School: Blair Taylor (from Seattle, WA) who will speak on eco-socialist movements in the wake of Covid-19, Zdravko Saveski (from Skopje, North Macedonia), who will speak about capitalism’s absolute inability to handle the climate crisis, Ivana Dragshich (from Skopje, North Macedonia) who will speak on eco-feminism and micro-politics, and Yavor Tarinski (from Sofia, Bulgaria/Athens, Greece) who will speak on the topic of bureaucracy and authoritarianism as obstacles to a true social-ecologist agenda, and other related issues.

The School for Politics and Critique 2021 is dedicated to current political and activist issues in the region and abroad, focusing on new and relevant knowledge from the intersecting areas of materialism, feminism, eco-socialism, Marxism, climate science, and other forms of radical political thought. The project aims to address, in a unified and relational manner, issues directly related to climate change, including radical response toward it, the rise and persistence of authoritarianism and iliberalism, especially as it exists in Southeast Europe, and women’s and feminist struggles. We will take a multi-disciplinary approach to the school covering areas such as grassroots resistance, materialist philosophy, radical feminism, and climate studies. In so doing, we will seek to examine potential unified alternatives to the current socio-economic-political hegemony which renders not only life, and especially female life, but the earth, and thus matter itself, as mere material for consumption, production, and the strengthening of the neoliberal, capitalist regime, which simultaneously exploits women as surplus value for the sustaining of patriarchal oppression. In accordance with this, the school will have a strong activist approach based around unified responses to real concrete and material struggles in the region and abroad.

The School is calling for both academics and activists from across the region of Southeast Europe (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Kosovo, Croatia, Republic of North Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia) as well as wider Europe. Twenty applicants from Southeast Europe will be accepted into the School. However, applicants from the region who are not from North Macedonia will participate/attend online due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the unpredictability of border crossing rules, in particular between EU and non EU states of the region. In addition to this, five applicants from the region and wider Europe will be accepted, and if possible can attend in person, but will have to fully fund and organize their entire trips themselves. Applicants should note that the school itself does not charge a fee for participation, and that food and drink will be provided to the offline participants. All applicants should include a CV in their applications, and make sure to state their motivation for attending in the designated section in the application form. Residents of North Macedonia are strongly encouraged to apply. ​

Application: Interested participants are encouraged to send their application (available for download on the link below or on www.isshs.edu.mk) to the following email addresses: info@isshs.edu.mk and zach.d.dejong@isshs.edu.mk. The deadline for applications is June 30th, 2021, and applicants will be notified of their status by July 10th, 2021.

We still have some room for online participants from Southeast Europe (Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Kosovo, Albania and Bulgaria)!