Camp Saoirse and direct action as radical pedagogy
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Date
2026-03-01
Authors
Cotter, Gertrude
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Abstract
In the summer of 2024, students at University College Cork (UCC), alongside students across Ireland and internationally, established a six-week encampment to protest their university’s institutional and financial links to companies complicit in Israel’s actions in Gaza, which United Nations bodies and major human rights organisations have determined constitute genocide under international law (OHCHR, 2025; Amnesty International, 2024). The encampment emerged in response to a military campaign that, by the time of writing, had resulted in the deaths of more than 72,000 Palestinians and the widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, schools, and residential areas (OCHA, 2026). At UCC, students demanded institutional transparency, divestment from companies and partnerships complicit in Israel’s occupation, colonisation of Palestinian land, apartheid policies, and genocide in Gaza, and a public condemnation of these actions from university leadership. Camp Saoirse (‘freedom’ in Irish) was established on the university’s central quadrangle (the ‘quad’), a symbolic ceremonial space traditionally reserved for graduation. Supported particularly by members of the student Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) group, the encampment functioned both as political protest and as a sustained ‘living classroom’. Drawing on interviews with nine students and visits to the camp as a supportive member of staff, this article focuses on Camp Saoirse from a pedagogical perspective. All students at the camp were invited to participate in this research and nine students accepted the invitation. It argues that the camp offers a compelling case study of radical pedagogy within critical global justice education (CGJE), showing how student-led direct action can foster critical consciousness and transformative learning. Drawing on Freire’s (1970: 36) concept of praxis and theories of critical pedagogy, the article explores how students co-created knowledge, practiced democratic decision-making, and engaged in a pedagogy of discomfort. It also situates Camp Saoirse within wider traditions of student activism and proposes that direct action offers not only political resistance, but also a radical pedagogy for empowering learners as agents of change.
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© 2026, Centre for Global Education. All rights reserved.
Keywords
SDG 16 - Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions , Critical global justice Education , Direct action , Genocide , Higher education , Praxis , Radical pedagogy , Student activism , Transformative learning , [Education] , Education
Citation
Cotter, G 2026, 'Camp Saoirse and direct action as radical pedagogy', Policy and Practice, vol. 2026, no. 42, pp. 69-91.
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