Terry Wrigley obituary from GRiEG, the University of Manchester

Terry was a fine activist scholar, a model of this concept. And we wish to celebrate his life as such, and tell of our experience of Terry and his recent work with us.

Terry Wrigley

Several of us as individuals came into contact with Terry over the years by virtue of our connection to his activism (more than a score, NUT, …) and his scholarly work on educational leadership and effectiveness research on ‘school improvement’. He came to Manchester as a scholar activist, and in the last two years we grew to know him more intimately as he participated in our Green Research in Education Group (GRiEG).

GRiEG aims to build our educational research related to the eco-crises, and one of its aims was to educate ourselves. Over the last couple of years Terry was a regular participant and we had the great benefit of his critical perspectives and also his good humour.

We studied a number of Andreas Malm’s recent books, and Terry was greatly engaged with the “The eye of this Storm” and its denunciation of “post-modern” works such as Latour’s – and worse, some followers of that trend that he considered to blunt our resistance to ecocidal capitalism, and so potential deadly enemies of our decarbonisation, and decolonisation movements. His perpective on this was not universally accepted in our group, but the debate was always friendly and productive.

Some of us wrote about this with Terry and we hope to see the fruits of this soon on www.culturalpraxis.net

Finally, it is with admiration and love of Terry, but also with determination to carry on the fight for activist-scholarship, that we say to Terry’s loved ones: his radical spirit lives on in us.