SO4A8      Half Unit
Leadership and Social Change

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

The course responds to the needs of the AFSEE Fellows to develop critical skills and understandings of leadership within various contexts and themes indexed to transforming global inequality.  This approach marries a structural analysis of global inequality and its manifestations with critical analysis, reflexive thinking, as well as practical skills that will provide students with the tools to bring systemic change into being. Crucially, the course is heavily rooted in theories of practice, in which Fellows are introduced to and demonstrate a sound knowledge and critical appreciation of their field and its associated practice and research techniques, and show that these techniques can be successfully applied in revealing or challenging injustice and inequality. The course will consist of lectures, presentations, seminars and workshops. Lectures will introduce Fellows to key concepts, approaches and techniques for understanding and challenging inequality. Workshops and seminars will help Fellows clarify and deepen their understanding of points and issues raised in the lectures, through practical work carried out individually and in groups.

This course is usually delivered through a combination of lectures and seminars totalling a minimum of 30 hours across WT and ST.

Week 1 – Reading Week of Winter Term - Leadership and Social Change

Week 2 – First Week after Spring Term - Leadership and Social Change

Essay plan

There will be one piece of formative coursework, a 750 word essay outline for their policy report in response to a set question. The formative outline will be due in week 10 of Winter Term. Fellows will receive written feedback on the essay outline and will have the opportunity to discuss the written feedback with the Course Convenor. This formative coursework is directly related to the summative essay which will be due in Spring Term.

Della Porta, D. (2015). Social Movements in Times of Austerity. Wiley.
Fricker, M. (2013). Epistemic justice as a condition of political freedom? Synthese, 190(7), 1317-1332.
Gaventa, J. (2006) Finding the Spaces for Change: A Power Analysis. IDS Bulletin 37 (6). November 2006.
Green, D. (2016) How Change Happens. Oxford University Press. Also accessible as a free download at < http://how-change-happens.com/download/>
Goss, S. (2015) Systems Leadership: A View from the Bridge. OPM.
Glasius, M. and Ishkanian, A. (2015) Surreptitious symbiosis: engagement between activists and NGOs. Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 26 (6). pp. 2620-2644.
Ishkanian, A. and Peña Saavedra, A. (2019) The politics and practices of intersectional prefiguration in social movements: the case of Sisters Uncut. Sociological Review, 67 (5). 985 - 1001.
Phillips, B. (2020) How to Fight Inequality and Why That Fight Needs You. Polity.
Raworth, K (2018) Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist. London. Random House Business.
Seckinelgin, H. (2017) The politics of global AIDS: institutionalization of solidarity, exclusion of context. Springer International Publishing, Switzerland.
Weldon, L. S. (2011). When protest makes policy: how social movements represent disadvantaged groups. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Presentation (30%) in June

Policy paper / report (70%, 2500 words) in May