Activist Research as Caring Infrastructure: Reflections from EASA 2026

What does it mean when we think of research not primarily as knowledge production, but as a form of solidarity infrastructure? This question brought together more than thirty social scientists across disciplines at our lab Activist Research as Caring / Solidarity Infrastructure: Reclaiming Anthropology's Interventions in a Polarised World at the 2026 conference of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) in Poznań, Poland. Participants came from across Europe and beyond, bringing experiences from fields as diverse as migration, feminist organising, climate activism, humanitarian work, labour struggles, anti-fascist mobilisation, and community organising.

Together with Mariya Ivancheva and Magdalena Michlová, SustainAction’s member Michaela Pixová invited participants to reflect on how research and academic work can contribute to infrastructures of solidarity and care at a time marked by democratic erosion, ecological crisis, war, genocides and growing inequalities. It also comes at a time when precarious employment, autocratic unfreedom and capitalist capture are growingly taking hold of neoliberal academia, which — with all its limitations — is one of the only safer spaces to fantasise, organise and enact alternatives from. Instead of asking how anthropology can study these processes, we were interested in what it means for research and academia to become part of broader efforts towards social transformation.

The Lab Activist Research as Caring / Solidarity Infrastructure: Reclaiming Anthropology's Interventions in a Polarised World at the 2026 conference EASA

The conversation drew on experiences from LeftEast and SustainAction projects, which both share an investment in the kind of academic and activist labour that too often tends to remain invisible: maintaining networks, organising encounters, sharing resources, translating knowledge across languages and political contexts, and cultivating relationships that endure beyond individual projects. Mariya Ivancheva quoted her recent chapter co-authored with Mary Taylor (Taylor & Ivancheva 2025) to speak about LeftEast not only as a platform for publishing political analysis, but as a community built through collective editorial work, translation, mutual support, and regular encounters that create what might be called an infrastructure of feeling, as has been in relation to the Black radical tradition. At the same time, the discussion also acknowledged the contradictions involved in this work, including uneven divisions of labour and the difficulties of sustaining volunteer-driven initiatives over the long term.

Drawing on SustainAction's recently published article on the "kitchen-work of collaborative research"(Sustain Action Method Lab 2026), Michaela Pixová introduced this framework which understands collaborative research as a form of caring and relational labour. The kitchen-work metaphor invites us to pay attention to all the preparation, negotiation, flexibility, emotional labour, and maintenance work that makes collaborative knowledge production possible, but which often disappears from publications, grant reports, and academic evaluation systems. Collaborative research, we argue, is not just a method. It is a political and ethical commitment that requires us to rethink how knowledge is produced, for whom, and for what purposes.

To structure the discussion, participants were invited to share already existing good practices and imagine future possibilities for research within, against, and beyond neoliberal academia. This was followed by an exchange of experiences, frustrations, concerns, hopes and fantasies.

The discussion on working within academia revolved around questions of recognition, redistribution, and belonging. Participants reflected on the challenges of their dual academic and activist identities and to what extent such a dichotomy is still valid in two ways: first in terms of the division between ‘objective’ science and ‘subjective’ activism; and secondly as an opposition between those who use academia for transformative projects, and those who actively transform it toward capitalist capture and destruction. The roundtable also touched on the persistence of hierarchies which determine whose work is valued and whose labour remains invisible. The debate revealed a strong sense that universities often contain numerous resources, networks, and privileges that could be shared more broadly, both within academia and with communities and movements beyond it. Participants also emphasised the need to pay greater attention to vulnerability, care, and the unequal distribution of opportunities and recognition; and outlined that those with more power and symbolic credit within academia should be those who take the first step toward challenging the status quo by changing their own ways of complying with it.

The table discussing research against academia revealed frustrations with the competitive and individualising logics of contemporary universities, and the need for de-hierarchising knowledge production, challenging conventional notions of authorship, and creating greater recognition for students, activists, and research partners who contribute to collective projects. The question of problematising or even rejecting traditional and often harmful academic pathways towards ever-growing excellence controlled through performance metrics was also raised. On the other hand, building meaningful connections among and between students, activists and research partners themselves was seen as an effort worth prioritising. Teaching and doing research, according to the Lab's participants, should not hesitate to leave the classroom and reclaim the streets, alternative spaces, or encampments. Discussions also touched on alternative publishing strategies, union organising, strikes, acts of refusal, and the importance of speaking more openly about the structural problems of academic life. Participants also highlighted the value of embracing uncertainty, experimentation, and even failure as part of engaged research practice and academia as such.

The convenors of the Lab: Mariya Ivancheva, Magdalena Michlová and Michaela Pixová

Interestingly, the discussion on working beyond academia was initially constrained by participants at first touching upon typical institutional problems and solutions. The imagination however grew with the unfolding discussions. The focus was on ideas such as universities no longer being governed by short-term political interests or market imperatives, and functioning as commons-oriented infrastructures supporting broader social and ecological transformation. Participants imagined institutions that provide housing, produce renewable energy and food, operate through international networks of solidarity, and make education genuinely accessible. Ideas such as universal basic income, shorter working weeks, alternative forms of learning, and stronger connections with social movements emerged as ways of creating the material conditions necessary for more democratic forms of knowledge production and education.

An encouraging outcome of the lab was the recognition that many researchers are grappling with similar dilemmas. Participants from across different countries, disciplines, personal backgrounds and political contexts shared a tangible concern that research cannot remain detached from the crises unfolding around us. The lab also revealed a spreading desire to move beyond critique towards practices that actively support collective action, social justice, and democratic futures.

For us at SustainAction, the discussion reaffirmed something we have learned repeatedly through our collaborations with movements and civil society organisations: change cannot be created by only focusing on knowledge production. Equally important are the infrastructures that sustain knowledge production and collective action, as well as the relationships we build, the resources we share, and different forms of care that make collaboration possible. If research is to contribute meaningfully to social transformation, then these infrastructures deserve to be at the centre of our attention.

These conversations which we decided to create a platform for at the EASA 2026 conference in Poznań will hopefully continue far beyond the conference itself. Several participants expressed interest in staying connected and the lab convenors were equally curious about possible future collaborations. In a moment when both universities and civil society are under increasing pressure, creating and sustaining infrastructures of solidarity may be one of the most important forms of activist endeavour we can undertake as academics.

/Michaela Pixová, Mariya Ivancheva, and Magdalena Michlová.