Over the last few years, I’ve been involved in a research project about Academic Hospitality in Interdisciplinary Education. In this project we’ve been thinking about how the concept of academic hospitality can inform interdisciplinary education focused on global challenges. This work draws on Derrida’s writing about the ethics of hospitality, which emphasises the idea of radical openness and welcome for every guest to arrive as they are without conditions. In the academic context this might mean, for example, openness to different ways of knowing from diverse academic disciplines and wider communities. While the ethics of hospitality might seem an unachievable ideal in contemporary higher education, striving in this direction is important for work on wicked problems. These kinds of global challenges can only be addressed by collaborating across and beyond the academy, and hospitality is central to that.

Thinking about hospitality in a more situated way in specific higher education contexts, we realise that we as teachers are often hosts in settings that are temporarily patched together from physical and virtual places and spaces that span multiple communities. These communities may include several academic disciplines but our temporary hosting space cannot be the whole discipline. We are also in our students’ communities and the homes they log in from. In a way we might be better to think about producing hosting and guesting on our trajectories through networked spaces, rather than being a stable host in a single home. These networked spaces develop atmospheres that are more welcoming to some than others. Hosting and guesting are not straightforwardly warm and friendly they involve tensions and shifting power relations. They beg us to ask questions like: Who is the host in this moment? Who is the guest? Whose knowledge is valued? Who is welcomed unconditionally?

So how might we go about being more hospitable? A starting point might be thinking through how we can welcome students showing up in different ways. Can it be OK to show up synchronously or asynchronously? With your camera on or with it turned off? Can we create shared ground rules that help everyone feel welcomed? Can we engage deep listening practices so that everyone participating feels heard? Are students welcomed to offer knowledge practices that are quite different from the ones of the hosting subject area? Can students show up for our assessments in different modes? Can they co-create the assessments so that they feel more welcome? Are all bodies equally welcome in our learning spaces?

What does this mean for us as teachers? I doubt many of us feel unconditionally welcomed to show up as our full selves in our institutions and teaching spaces. The vulnerabilities around hospitality are particularly risky for any teacher experiencing intersectional discrimination. We need to think carefully about how much will and energy we can give to striving for hospitality without burning out.

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