With good reason, the issues of sustainability and conservation are mostly concerned with the vulnerability of the non-human biological and ecological environment, and humans are discussed in terms of threat. However, it can be argued that being human is also at risk in many spheres and at many levels in an increasingly regulated, surveillanced and dominantly monetarist contemporary world (Giroux, 2004). One such sphere is, regrettably, the university. As Levin and Greenwood (2011) among others, note, university departments more and more see themselves as commercial and managerial units and are increasingly at risk of losing their traditional mandate to question society and independently and freely pursue knowledge for its own sake. Cost-transaction economics (Olssen & Peters 2005) increasingly prescribe the priorities and activities of public institutions such as universities, and consequently the human needs of both staff and students are often seen as both irrelevant and unaffordable. Sustaining the human has become a wicked problem. This paper examines the threatened habitat of international doctoral students and their supervisors. It is argued that they are trapped in a tension between increasing institutional monetarism and shrinking time allowances and the need to explore, deconstruct and re-interpret the complex and slippery issues at are entangled in developing research projects are both genuinely relevant to the needs of real localised communities and can generate something that will be useful to the people being researched. The paper explores the struggle to keep a strong people-place basis, to sustain organic learning communities, to navigate and narrate displacement between academic and real purposes, metaphoric and physical journeys and re-configuration of ideas. It builds on the author’s previous research that examined the concept of fair academic trade in teacher education (Greenwood, Alam & Kabir 2014, Greenwood, Alam, Salahuddin & Rasheed 2016), the importance of place in doctoral research (Greenwood, 2016a) and the development of doctoral learning communities (2016b). It acknowledges that the struggle involved is not one that can expect solution. In the sense used by Skyttner (1996) It is a wicked problem that reinvents itself and at best can only be “resolved - over and over again.” The presentation involves a photo-montage and a series of dramatic monologues in an open space that engages the audience as spect-actors (Boal, 1979) who not only view but also contribute to critical analysis and tentative res-solving of the struggle.

Boal, A. (1979) Theatre of the Oppressed. London: Pluto Press Giroux, H. (2004). Neoliberalism, Authoritarianism and the Eclipse of Democracy. Colorado: Paradigm Greenwood, J. (2016a) The where of doctoral research: the role of place in creating meaning. Environmental Education Research : Greenwood, J. (2016b) Internationalisation without homogenisation: Creating a doctoral learning community. ECER 2016. Greenwood, J., Alam, S. and Kabir, A. (2014) Educational Change and International Trade in Teacher Development: Achieving Local Goals Within/Despite a Transnational Context. Journal of Studies in International Education 18(4) Greenwood, J., Alam, S., Salahuddin, A and Rasheed, M (2016) Learning communities and fair trade in doctorates and development: report of a collaborative project. Globalisation, Societies and Education 14(1) Levin, M. & Greenwood, D. (2011). ‘Revitalizing Universities by Reinventing the Social Sciences: Bildung and Action Research’. In N. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (eds.,) The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Olssen, M.& . Peters, M. (2005). ‘Neoliberalism, Higher Education and the Knowledge Economy: From the Free Market to Knowledge Capitalism’. Journal of Education policy, vol. 20(3): Skyttner, L. (1996). General systems theory: An introduction. Basingstoke: MacMillan Press. Thrift, N . (2004). Intensities of Feeling: Towards a Spatial Politics of Affect. Geografiska Annaler: 86