The School of Emergent Priorities' seminar series turns its next session to programs kept alive on renewed provisional budgets long after the review meant to settle their status, with Dr Lindiwe Achterberg presenting later this teaching period.
Dr Lindiwe Achterberg brings her record of provisional programs to the School of Emergent Priorities' seminar series, chaired by convenor Dr Ingrid Vasseur.
Futures in Committee exists to turn an open question into committee business — narrowing a scanning exercise’s loose ends into an agenda item, then a recommendation, then a minute. Its next session turns that machinery on a question the School’s own agendas rarely carry: what keeps a program in provisional status years after the review meant to settle it.
Dr Lindiwe Achterberg, Lecturer in the School of Emergent Priorities, presents the session under convenor Dr Ingrid Vasseur. Dr Achterberg’s research assembles a comparative archive of initiatives kept running on renewed provisional budgets and re-scoping memos, tracing how an extension can substitute indefinitely for the confirmation a program was originally meant to receive.
A program doesn’t need a decision to keep running. It only needs nobody scheduling the meeting where the decision would happen.
— Dr Lindiwe Achterberg, Lecturer, School of Emergent Priorities
“Most committees are carrying at least one item that has been under consideration since before their newest member joined,” said Dr Ingrid Vasseur, Lecturer and Convenor of Futures in Committee. “Lindiwe’s session is our chance to work out which of ours qualify.”
Futures in Committee keeps its brief wide enough to turn on the School’s own long-running items, not only the horizons it scans elsewhere. The session is planned for later this teaching period, with venue and time to follow closer to the date.