Together with the University of Trento (UniTN), the Global Student Forum is organising a webinar series as part of the StAR Erasmus+ project, titled “Student Academic Freedom: Rights, Violations and Mobilisation in Times of Global Crisis.” Running from October to December 2026, the series brings together research on student movements, alternative education and the pressures facing students who challenge authoritarianism.
Across five sessions, speakers will explore experiences from Myanmar, India, Nicaragua and Serbia, as well as the repression of student activism in solidarity with Palestine. The discussions will examine both the restrictions students face and the ways they create spaces for learning, collective action and democratic debate.
For the Global Student Forum, these questions are central to defending student rights. Academic freedom concerns students’ ability to question, learn, organise and contribute to the societies around them. The series offers an opportunity for student organisations, researchers and education advocates to connect these concerns across different contexts.
The programme
9 October — Pedagogies of Resistance: Alternative Higher Education and Student Democratic Citizenship in Post-Coup Myanmar
Tin Maung Htwe, Research Fellow at the Regional Center for Social Science and Sustainable Development at Chiang Mai University, will examine how grassroots institutions sustain education and cultivate democratic citizenship amid conflict and displacement. The session draws on research into Spring University Myanmar and Karenni National College.
23 October — The University Prefigured: Reading Circles, Student Resistance, and Authoritarian Censorship in India
Vidyasagar Sharma, Doctoral Candidate at Bielefeld University, will explore how student reading circles at Delhi University use collective study to challenge censorship and sustain spaces for political discussion and critical thinking.
6 November — Transnational Repression: Student Defense of Academic Freedom and Palestinian Solidarity
Sevgi Doğan, Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Pisa, will examine mechanisms of repression affecting student solidarity with Palestine. Focusing particularly on the United States and Germany, the session will consider the implications for freedom of expression, student advocacy and academic freedom.
4 December — Nicaraguan Students in Exile: The Impacts of the Political Culture of the Student Movement on Students’ Democratic Ethos
Thais Sandoval, Human Rights Defender and Deputy Leader of SAIH, will discuss how repression, displacement and activism shape exiled student leaders’ understandings of democracy, participation and accountability. The session will also explore the challenges of sustaining movements in exile.
11 December — Serbia: The Culture of Student Protests
Milica Popović, Senior Postdoctoral Researcher at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, will examine student mobilisation in Serbia and what it reveals about academic freedom and the university’s role as a democratic space for dialogue and social engagement.
Take part
All five webinars take place online in 2026, with each session listed in the programme at 12:00 CET.
The Global Student Forum encourages student organisations, activists, researchers and education advocates to participate and share the programme with their networks.
Register for the StAR webinar series
The series brings together different perspectives to encourage academic exchange and discussion. The views and terminology used by individual speakers do not necessarily reflect the positions of the Global Student Forum or its project partners.
