Community engagement courses and feminist participatory action research: Pedagogies of sacrifice and refusal

Abstract This commentary seeks to unpack the politics of community engagement and collaboration, which is an increasingly common practice in neoliberal universities. By centring feminist participatory action research, we examine the disjunction between extractive forms of collaboration for education and feminist pedagogy's aims to work against oppressive structures. Drawing from our teaching experiences at the National University of Singapore, we discuss how feminist educators navigate the risks associated with conducting community engagement courses and the sacrifices and refusals this entails. We reveal the challenges of enacting meaningful feminist participatory community research at the nexus of three intersecting spaces – community, classroom, and university. We support our arguments by drawing from our experiences of partnering with two non‐governmental organisations in Singapore, Sayoni (an LGBTQ+ group) and the Young Sikh Association. We argue that the path ahead calls for more feminist pedagogical tactics that reinstate the radical potential for collaborating with community groups.