OUR STORY

Critical Edges is a collaborative magazine edited and published by critical students from all over the world, offering diverse perspectives, stories, analysis, and artistic expressions on global topics and issues that affect all of us. Questions around education and science are of our central concerns.

Students from different critical universities first met each other in the Critical Edge Alliance conferences in 2016 and 2017. We created the magazine out of the passion for alternative models and pedagogies in higher education to address social ills and put students at the center. Over the past 4 years, we have grown to reach more universities and to cover important global topics.

The students working in the magazine are united in the fight against existing injustice and oppression in society and nature, through co-creating knowledge and distributing relevant, critical, and popular content for students located in different campuses all around the world.

The magazine strives for independence from external control and for ideological plurality. We are working towards democratic participation and representation from students of diverse backgrounds. Moreover, we aim to become a leading global voice for critical students by collaborating with diverse editors, writers, scholars, artists, and activists to build a critical magazine.

The magazine is economically supported by the Critical Edges Alliance, covering the website hosting and the printing fees, and occasionally working together on different projects.

By Critical Edges Global Editorial Board. June, 2020. 

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GOVERNANCE STRUCTURE

We have experimented with different work structures over the years. The Global Editorial Board has been our main operational organ. In the first half of 2020, we have developed strong work teams in the area of editing, publishing and social media. In this second half of 2020, we aim to expand the Global Editorial Board in order to strengthen our editorial line and original content creation, as well as to broaden our community of student contributor, editors, collaborators, and readers.

In the following six months, we will be experimenting with a new structure illustrated below (click on the graph to get a full view).

Descriptions of Coordination Sections

Content creation
The concrete manifestation of this team is yet to be defined clearly, but it is evident that it must be able to produce the content that we believe our magazine should consist of. We must make it into a creative and large team with a lot of space for differences, experiments, vigorous work, investigation, journalism, essay writing, theoretical discussions, and fun. We must not create a narrow culture, where we say no to good ideas, just because they are either not fashionable or not in our taste. We must seek plurality, without just ending at a “value free” neutrality or monotonous tolerance. We must be critical still, question and opposite irrationality and oppression, and keep discussing which one is which. Keep pursuing the goal of being ethical, political and responsible human beings, also as academics and scientists. In this spirit, and in the spirit of wanting to educate our (often younger) peers, we must go ahead with a journey, where we create our own content, that is both critical, thought provoking, fun, unusual, readable, touching, entertaining, inspiring and fun..

Editing
The people in this section are the coordinators of the Editing Team. In this suggestion, the coordinators are divided into Chief Editor(s) and Assistant(s). Furthermore, in the Editing Team, there will be a large Lead Editing Group, who will organize the many regular editors into Editing Work Groups. The Chief Editor will not only help guide and coordinate all the Lead Editors in their work (example by dividing the work among them), but also be responsible for quality of the content published as well as time efficiency. The Chief Editor will be helped by one or two Assistants, as well as all of the Lead Editors. In case of any controversies, or difficult problems emerge, it is the job of the Chief Editor and Lead Editors to bring it up to discussion within the Lead Editing Group. This is only necessary if the Editing Work Group responsible for the article is not able to overcome the difficulty or controversy they have run into alone. 

Publishing & social media
The people in these two coordination sections are the coordinators of the Publishing & Social Media Team. As illustrated above the Publishing & Social Media Team has its own two sections: It’s WordPress Section and its Social Media Section, respectively. 

A regular coordinator from each of the team sections will constitute the Publishing Coordination Section and the Social Media Coordination Section. In this suggestion, it is Ifi and Thea who each take a role in each of their coordination sections. But they will choose to rotate and share their responsibilities. 

The two fields, Publishing and Social Media are connected into one Team, the rationality behind this is to facilitate the overlapping work each of them have, as well as the deep connection between their work. The WordPress Editors will thus be in close contact with the Social Media Editors, to heighten the quality of the work, enhance it, highlight its essential characteristics and aesthetics, and promote it in the wide public on social media. 

The two Coordination Sections for this team, will not only help guide and coordinate all the WordPress and Social Media Editors in their work (example by dividing the work among them), but are also responsible for the quality of the content published as well as time efficiency. 

In case of any fault or lack of editing work, or if unanswered questions of importance for the form and content to be published emerge, it is the responsibility of the Publishing & Social Media Coordinators to bring it up to discussion with the Chief Editor or Lead Editors in the Editing Coordination. Thus necessarily delaying the publication, but making sure that the quality reaches our standard both in terms of form as well as content.

Community & outreach
The task of this section is two fold: one is facing outwards: to help the community members, and to reach out to other areas and people around the world to join or collaborate with the magazine. The other is facing inwards: to focus on developing new members, increasing members’ engagement, and increasing exchanges in the wider community.

We are currently looking for members in this position.

Updated on February 14, 2021.