Leveraging Openness for Refugees’ Higher Education: A Freiran Perspective to Foster Open Cooperation

Abstract

Research in the field of Higher Education in Emergencies (HEiE) starts to question the imposed Global North-centred perspective which arrives with ready-made solutions, considering refugees as objects of intervention rather than subjects of transformation. Leveraging the broader topics of Open Science and Open Education, this paper pioneers a new approach to scientific cooperation, fostering values of Openness in refugee higher education. It specifically addresses HEiE in Niger, Africa, in a training of trainers’ programme. It is designed in a participatory manner involving academics from the Global South and Global North, refugees who are themselves educators, and NGOs. Taking the form of a Certificate of Open Studies (COS), the training empowers refugees as enabled change agents, capable of making sense of diverse knowledge systems to transform their reality. Preliminary understanding of Open Cooperation is shared through a conceptual framework, Empowering refugees through liberation-oriented education. It addresses sustainability at the ontological and epistemic levels and relies on four main dimensions: Epistemologies of the South, Openness, Common good and Education as empowerment.