I.02. Designing Democratic Innovation: Alternative Practices for the Future of Academia

This session examines both institutional and informal counter-narratives and practices that seek to democratize education by addressing the shortcomings of traditional academia, including competition, inequality, exploitation, and precarity (Boynton 2021). In response to the current academic environment, two parallel developments have emerged: the growth of research on care, collaboration, acceleration/deceleration, and social innovation (Schröder and Krüger 2019) in higher education, and the flourishing of alternative academic work practices (Ganugi and Marocchini 2025).

The session provides an opportunity to reflect on how these strategies contribute to democratizing higher education and explore new forms of participation and institutional responsiveness. Contributions are invited to address questions such as:

• What characteristics define innovative practices in terms of actors involved, focus of action, degree of institutionalization, territorial or digital expansion, type of impact, and groups benefiting?
• What forms of infrastructuring and social relations enhance the legitimacy, sustainability, or responsiveness of democratic innovation in academia?
• In what ways do innovative practices challenge, reinforce, or transform existing power dynamics, exclusions, or inequities within academic institutions?
• How do alternative approaches to writing, researching, teaching, organizing work, and using digital platforms mediate and advance democratization?
• How might innovative practices foster inclusive and collaborative academic cultures?
• How can academia itself be reimagined as a culture of sustainable and democratic research, teaching, and science communication?

The session welcomes theoretical reflections and empirical research on this theme, but also methodological insights into participatory techniques and modalities that foster and disseminate innovative democratic practices in academia.