1) How did you determine the focus of your research, and how does it relate to the challenges that you consider to be the most important for advancing academic freedom as a fundamental human right?

Our research approach is based on the understanding that academic freedom cannot be fully realized without considering the structures of inequality that permeate societies and university spaces. In Peru, social class, place of origin, language, gender, and cul-tural capital continue to determine who gains access to universities, whose voices are heard in their classrooms, and which topics are considered legitimate subjects of academic reflection.

For this reason, we take an intersectional and critical approach, which allows us to highlight the tension between the university’s promise as a space for free thought and its actual functioning as an institution marked by hierarchies, exclusions, and silencing. We articulate this perspective through a qualitative methodology based on interviews and observations, which allows us to capture students’ situated experiences in their everyday academic lives. Through this approach, we seek to understand how exclusions operate in formal norms and in the practices and meanings that shape university research.

This perspective aligns with the current challenges of guaranteeing academic freedom as a fundamental human right. Protecting freedom of teaching or research is insufficient if the structural conditions preventing many individuals from exercising these freedoms equally are not transformed. Additionally, the current political context in Peru must be considered a limiting factor of academic freedom, in addition to the aforementioned structural issues. Democratic regression, the rise and permanence of de facto powers, and the presence of repression and censorship led us to focus on the two most politically active degree programs at the selected universities.

2) What impact do you think your research will have on academic freedom in the short and long term?

In the short term, we aim to initiate a process of critical listening and collective reflection that challenges the official narratives about university equity. By collecting testimonies and evidence about structural barriers in academia, we aim to encourage institutions and university communities to embrace productive discomfort, which questions the status quo and forces us to reconsider spaces of power. To this end, we will develop proposals for solutions with the study participants, which is the most practical aspect of the research.

In the long term, we aspire to contribute to a cultural transformation in how academic freedom is conceived and exercised. This means defending academic freedom against external threats and democratizing it from within. We want to broaden the margins of the thinkable, dignify historically marginalized voices, and create real conditions for the university to be a laboratory of free and diverse thought. We also want to reduce the impact of structural differences on academic work. In other words, we want academic freedom to cease being a privilege and become a pluralistic right.

3) What is the importance of taking part in this call for research proposals that is being promoted by CAFA and CLACSO?

Participating in this call is a strategic opportunity to integrate our work into a Latin American network that documents threats to academic freedom and actively develops collective responses from situated, critical perspectives. CAFA and CLACSO are essential platforms for raising awareness of the challenges faced by students, faculty, and researchers in environments where university autonomy is compromised and the creation of critical knowledge is hindered or censored.

In a country like Peru, where state repression, criminalization of dissent, and ideological pressures have weakened the transformative role of the university, this call enables us to connect with other regional experiences that face similar challenges. Through this coordination, we aim to highlight local forms of exclusion and resistance and en-rich our analytical and action tools by engaging in dialogue with teams from other countries.

Furthermore, we believe that strengthening networks such as CAFA and CLACSO is essential to increasing the protection and legitimacy of those who advocate for a democratic, pluralistic university committed to social justice. Thus, participating in this initiative is an academic, political, and epistemological commitment: we position our-selves with and from the epistemologies of the South to imagine and build other possible forms of academic freedom.