Student Activism in Higher Education: The politics of students’ role in hegemonic university change

Students are actively denied access to the tools of cultural change under hegemony. In recent history, student participation has risen at Flinders University, coupled with an increasing imperative for global democratic governance revisioning. This thesis makes several significant original contributions to knowledge in light of this change: it examines the largely unexplored landscape of student participation in governance through ethnography; it deploys an increasingly displaced methodological frame of Gramscian social science and philosophy of praxis; and, through its acknowledgement of the ongoing cultural significance of activism and hegemony, it summons the possibility for fundamentally repurposing higher education. Ultimately, the thesis highlights the necessity of repositioning democratic values at the heart of teaching and learning. It argues that universities must enable genuine participatory educative and researching potential for students, through partnership approaches, grassroots action and student governance representation. The thesis has profound ramifications for the future and purpose of higher education.