The Critical Institute – Who we are
The Critical Institute is a non-profit organisation set up and run by academics and activist practitioners. It offers a democratic and interdisciplinary platform to debate, learn and collaborate on world class critical research, teaching and practice. We engage in practice that actively questions and confronts inequalities and oppression- knowledge and practice that have a transformative agenda.
We are especially committed to linking research and practice as a project of praxis, motivated by real needs, dedicated to social justice through social and political change. We seek to achieve real and lasting ‘impact’ determined by real people on their own terms and not by research councils, universities, policy makers or politicians as we strengthen efforts at decolonizing knowledge, research and practice.
TCI is a registered not-for-profit with the Commission for Voluntary Organisations in Malta. Registration number: VO/0995
How we do it
At The Critical Institute we politicise education and practice prioritising under-resourced populations, especially in the global South. All our research, teaching and practice programmes are developed and conducted through respectful, inclusive and democratic processes prioritising the knowledge, narratives and agency of those we work with. At The Critical Institute we promote and provide a platform for the open and free sharing of knowledge, while supporting existing and developing new activist/practice projects.
Our values
A set of values guide our work:
- Our members and people we work with are our best resource: They are thinking and change-making individuals. They are free to come and go. We, in turn provide quality services by fellows and volunteers treated with respect, unstifled by unnecessary bureaucracy and the growing culture of fear within increasingly neoliberal institutions.
- We do not do ‘anything’ for the money: Universities and other organisations are free to support the institute’s agenda and work with us, but not dictate it.
- Quality and critical research, teaching, information and knowledge should be affordable, accessible and available to all, unconstrained by money, class, dis/ability, gender, race, citizenship, status, or geography.
- Knowledge must be grounded, responsive, linked to practice, and committed to personal, political and social change.
- Research and teaching have a responsibility to question, challenge and work against oppression and marginalisation of all forms in all spaces.
- The voices of those we work with should never be stifled or ignored, directly or indirectly.
- Geopolitical asymmetries including in knowledge generation and dissemination need to be probed and shifted in the current scenario of academic and epistemic neocolonization.