Contextualising this Care-full Scholarship MOOC

This MOOC has been inspired by a deep appreciation for Feminist Care Ethics (FCE) scholarship, our own experiences of applying an ethics of care logic to our scholarship, our previous interactions with a number of the guest contributors (which includes early career researchers, more senior academics and practitioners based outside the academy), and also their respective desires and experiences of remaining true to an ethics of care through their work.

Whilst a commitment to furthering just and transformative societal change serves as a unifying feature for all such contributors, at the same time, variations in our individual ways of working, stages of career, philosophies, as well as our responsibilities, abilities, and response-abilities [to be further explained in just a moment (Unit 2: L2)], has also created a rich and multi-faceted ‘contact zone’ for a number of us; one in which our simultaneous valuing and problematising of what it means to be part of a care-full collective has been apparent to and lived through by us all.  

We will share more on the above and what it has taught us about the practicing of care-full scholarship at various points throughout this MOOC. As a further opening note of orientation though, regarding the context and stimulation behind the creation of this MOOC, and also the reason as to why it has been possible, we end this first lesson with a brief introduction (on the next page) to the project from which it grew and through which many of the original conveners and guest contributors came to work alongside one another as part of a care-full collective: RECOMS.