Call for Applications - Youth Rising Creative Workshop for Academic Freedom 2025
Youth Rising: Southeast Asian Youth for Academic Freedom is envisioned as a nexus of academic freedom and artistic freedom among young people — a creative workshop that brings together students, young scholars, and artists to explore how imagination and critical inquiry can confront repression and inspire collective action in academic spaces and in solidarity with academic communities and other stakeholders. Through participatory dialogue, art-making, and storytelling, the initiative seeks to reclaim campuses and classrooms as spaces of freedom, while amplifying youth voices in the broader struggle for rights, democracy, and social justice in Southeast Asia.
Across Southeast Asia, academic freedom is under increasing threat. Students and scholars alike face surveillance, censorship, militarization of campuses, political interference, and shrinking civic space. In many cases, educational institutions are no longer safe spaces for critical thinking, dissent, or inclusive dialogue.
While youth are often on the frontlines of mobilizations and actions, they are rarely centered in regional academic freedom conversations. Yet, young people — especially students — are key actors within academic communities. They experience the daily impacts of repression in classrooms and campuses, while also holding the energy, imagination, and cross-sector reach to build movements and reshape educational spaces from the ground up. As such, sustained movements for academic freedom require intergenerational dialogue and multi-stakeholder solidarity. Young people must be able to engage with educators, researchers, civil society actors, and policy advocates to bridge perspectives, co-create strategies, and collectively uphold the right to education and free inquiry.
The camp and workshop program supports this ecosystem by empowering youth to participate in cross-cutting conversations and alliances for academic freedom — a form of engaged scholarship.
🌱 FULLY-FUNDED OPPORTUNITY
🌱 15 selected youth participants, aged 18-30 years old from across Southeast Asia
🌱 October 31 - November 1, 2025
🌱 Mahidol University, Salaya Campus, Thailand (about 25 km from central Bangkok)
🌱 Deadline of Application - September 26, 2025
Read more of the concept note and program agenda here.
