Frustrated by the lack of opportunities to research, create learning experiences or make a basic living within the university on our own terms, para-academics don't seek out alternative careers in the face of an evaporated future; we just continue to do what we've always done: write, research, learn, think and facilitate that process for others. As the para-academic community grows, there is a real need to build supportive networks, share knowledge, ideas and strategies that can allow these types of interventions to become sustainable and flourish. There is a very real need to create spaces of solace, action and creativity. Para-academics mimic academic practices so they are liberated from the confines of the university. Our work, and our lives, reflect how the idea of a university as a place for knowledge production, discussion and learning, has become distorted by neo-liberal market forces. We create alternative, genuinely open access, learning-thinking-making-acting spaces on the internet, in publications, in exhibitions, discussion groups or through other mediums that seem appropriate to the situation. We don’t sit back and worry about our career developments paths. We write for the love of it; we think because we have to; we do it because we care.

Table of Contents:
Foreword: We Are All Para-Academics Now Gary Rolfe Para-academia: Reclaiming What Has Been Devastated Deborah Withers & Alex Wardrop A Procrastination Alex Wardrop Notes on the Prefix Alexander M. Kokoli Spaces of Possibility: Pedagogy and Politics in a Changing Institution Lena Wånggren & Maja Milatovic Interview with Joyce Canaan Joyce Canaan & Deborah Withers A Pedagogics of Unlearning Éamonn Dunne & Michael O’Rourke Emboldened and Unterrified: In/ Outside and – In Spite Of – The Neoliberal Academy Christian Garland A Lesson from Warwick The Provisional University Beyond the Defence of the Public University: Building a New Schole Kelvin Mason & Mark Purcell Decentring Knowledge Production – Reflections on Learning Spaces In and Alongside Academic Institutions Laura Sterry Edge, Empowerment and Sustainability: Para-Academic Practice as Applied Permaculture Design Tom Henfrey Higher Degree (Un) Consciousness: A Frierean Approach to Post-Graduate Study Emma Durden, Eliza Govender and Sertanya Reddy Crowdfunding of Academic Books: A Case Study Oliver Leistert & Theo Röhle Para-Academic Publishing As Public-Making Paul Boshears An Activist-Academic’s Reflections on Para-Academia Louise Livesey No More Stitch Ups! Media, Research Justice and Fat Activist Community Knowledge Charlotte Cooper Simultaneous Life and Death in Every Moment Georgina Huntley On the Academy's Point of Exteriority/ DUST Manifesto Fintan Neylan The Pros and Cons of Para-Academia: A Personal UK Perspective Tony Keen Reflections of an Incidental Maverick Paul Hurley Otherwise Engaged B.J. Epstein Marginal Inquiries; Precarity, Parergons and Situated Knowledges Margaret Mayhew Epicurean Rain Eileen Joy Resources