4/4 At this point, it's tempting to come up with a spreadable phrase like 'universities are sooo over these days'. But that would be inaccurate. It'd also be unfair. Much of this would be impossible without higher education. Many of those involved are doing or have done MAs and PhDs as well as undergraduate degrees. They’re engaging with — and building on — the work academics continue to produce from within the university. They’re still very much part of the ecology of theory.

Still, for what are pretty obvious reasons — job cuts, precarity, casualisation, managerialism, excessive workloads, pressure from students and their parents for more instrumental and employability-focused courses, a general shift away from theory to more conservative intellectual formations and frameworks — university spaces today often feel a lot less alive than what’s happening here above the shop.