Advancing a Social Justice Approach to Internet Governance Studies Pedagogy

This paper advances a social justice perspective on Internet Governance studies (IGS) and pedagogy in an effort to address the implications of power imbalances in IG-relevant academic and policymaking forums. We first discuss the theoretical foundations of a critical framework for IGS pedagogy. We then describe how these ideas are reflected in our praxis-oriented course designs that include 1) problem/inquiry-based teaching and learning strategies; 2) transnational classrooms; and 3) collaboration with civil society partners working on IG-relevant policy issues from a social justice perspective in the global south. Our civil society partner in this project opens this discussion with reflections on his reasons for joining our collaboration. Following this, we describe our jointly designed graduate and undergraduate seminars on IG and data governance and lessons learned from them. Our paper concludes with speculations and reflections about our approach, and what it offers to discussions on the future and boundaries of IGS