Cultural Processes, Social Change and New Horizons in Education

Review of Ph.D Studies in Humanities: Updating New Horizons in Education

“…As examples the results, some dissertation projects can be mentioned, such as 'The Theatre of the Oppressed: An Aesthetic Practice Where the Subject Becomes Visible' [7], in which Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) of Augusto Boal [8] was used as the main methodology applied to explore through theatre and in creative ways some daily expressions of patriarchate, homo/lesbophobia, employment discrimination and even power relations existing in prison between internals beyond the control of the wards; 'Which Reality? Interactions at the Southern Border of Mexico, as a Projection of an Artistic Creation Practice' [9], aimed to be at the same time a creation process and an analysis of an artistic practice as a vehicle for generating and understanding knowledge [10] based on the diversity of cultural and social manifestations along the southern border of Mexico, where the border line not only marks a geopolitical limit between two nation-states (Mexico and Guatemala), but also emphasizes their differences and all they have in common through a palpable repertoires of mobility of people, things and events [11], and 'Behind the Walls: Democracy, Political and Cultural Management in Mexico and Ecuador 2007-2013' [12] exploring cultural management, democratization, cultural policy and cultural democracy [13] as concepts that shape practices of street art and graffiti as non-hegemonic experiences in institutional spaces and in which the author suggests that both street art and graffiti should be considered beyond their traditional location as part of youth culture and their relation with gangs and urban criminality [1].…”

“…In 2016-2017, due to the request of the National Council for Science and Technology, CONACYT, and its National Postgraduate as detonators of cultural practices and knowledge production beyond the Occidental canon [1].…”

“…The institutional research project itself, to which the dissertation work of each student has been inserted and through which it has been constantly monitored, has resulted an innovative pedagogic mechanism through which students have been involved in active research work guided by an academic tutor and thus effectively introduced to research methodologies and theories straight from the beginning [1].…”

“…The cooperation between researchers, creators and communities in terms of recollection, analysis and study of alternative knowledge production requires a special kind of creativity and sensibility able to capture meanings and individual and collective manifestations as these present forms beyond the canonical validation of knowledge by cultural norms. Thus, these hybrid, sensuous and critically reflective cultural forms demand new, innovative research initiatives that challenge the current stiff university system demanding substantial changes in the traditional role of research and education in humanities; for example, Belonging Bologna-seminar report [5] emphasizes that art, design and culture education and research should always be connected to and reflecting the events of the outside world [1].…”

“…One of the characteristics of the new Ph.D. programs in humanities has been their trend to widen the Eurocentric shallow sense of history, seeking for knowledges sprung from the unseen roots of the Others forgotten by the historical amnesia of the Western universities [1,2]. The response to that has been the emergence of programs with 'disobedient' epistemic frameworks; the colonial axis of power-knowledge-culture, which had reduced entire people to objects of study, and others to hegemonic producers of knowledge, had now to be re-valued by themselves by socialcultural struggle and by epistemological and aesthetic innovation [3].…”