Paulo Freire Center for Transdisciplinary Development Research and Dialogical Education, Vienna (Austria)
The Paulo Freire Center for Transdisciplinary Development Research and Dialogical Education in Vienna was founded in 2004. It was initiated as a joint project by The Austrian Research Foundation for International Development (ÖFSE) and the Mattersburg Circle for Development Policies at Austrian Universities (Mattersburger Kreis). From 2009 to 2014 the Freire Center was part of KommEnt. Since 2015 it is part of the Mattersburg Circle.
The Paulo Freire Center offers space for the reflection of political practice. It considers practice (action and reflection) in research, education and politics as part of a process which ultimately aims at the abolition of oppression.
The Paulo Freire Center advocates knowledge as public property. Even if one assumes, for the sake of the argument, that all obstacles to knowledge and education would be removed today (reality points into a different direction), the following questions would remain: How can knowledge be imparted in order to be used to reach the ultimate goal of any development research, the abolition of oppression?! Is it enough to enable as many people as possible to get an education in traditional institutions? In the tradition of Paulo Freire, the Paulo Freire Center says: No, it is not enough! It is rather the teaching method and the ideological vision of education that matter.
Objectives of the Paulo Freire Center
The Paulo Freire Center pursues three objectives (research education politics):
• Education as a reflection of practice: Reflection on the future of development cooperation, and its connection with concrete everyday problems of development cooperation and its specific „project culture“. This includes – in terms of Paulo Freires formulation „to learn how to read the world“ – a political-economic alphabetization;
• The politicization of Austrian Development Cooperation: Re-appropriation of the long term, creative and ethical element of development cooperation and development politics in favor of disadvantaged or oppressed groups;
• To organize the dialogue between practice and research: To encourage new forms of researching, teaching and learning in the interest of development cooperation and development politics.
To come closer to reach these objectives the Paulo Freire Center organizes different activities. They regard five different topics: migration, common welfare, development research, education and development politics.
