CfP: Decolonization and its Forms of Knowledge: Histories, Pedagogies, Methods, & Praxis

The struggle to decolonize was and continues to be intimately linked to questions and practices of education, teaching, and consciousness-raising. While scholars have generatively traced how colonialism relied on grammars and hierarchies of knowledge production and dissemination, in this workshop we ask: How did decolonization – as a response and reckoning with colonialism and its forms of knowledges – hinge on (re)figuring new forms of knowing and subjecthood? Did the institutionalization of new knowledge practices linked to decolonization in academic and non-academic contexts innovate or reproduce old pathways and thereby create neocolonial legacies?

Indeed, while many anti-colonial movements’ true emancipation associated new material and legal freedoms with the liberation of the mind and the formation of a new cadres in newly independent states at the time of decolonization, decolonizing efforts have sometimes ended up privileging modes of education and knowing that reinforced transnational structures of domination, marginalizing aberrant subjectivities and voices. But against such forms of exclusion and oppression, practices of (re)education, innovative professional trainings and other radical experiments have also tried to fashion democratic and decolonial modalities of self and community. These challenges to neocolonial transnational logics have taken many forms and originated from many disciplines (from international law to humanities or scientific endeavors) with different impacts that are key to analyze in context.

Departing from and building on our first workshop that explored the archival practices and politics of decolonization, our second workshop interrogates decolonization and the forms of knowledges it spurred in contexts of decolonization across four inter-related axes: 
  • Histories: Explore historically the intersection between decolonization and education (literacy programs, professional training programs for new ‘cadres’ and elites, efforts of consciousness-raising, alternative study circles, etc.) across the long twentieth century (in particular, the interwar and cold war periods, but also in more contemporary contexts of settler colonialism).
  • Pedagogies: Interrogate the politics and thought behind movements that mobilized pedagogical practices in their struggle to decolonize.
  • Methods: Engage with multi-media methods (archival, digital, oral, public) and sources (textual, material, visual) in unearthing, teaching, and learning the histories and legacies of decolonization.
  • Praxis: Making public through discussion, collaboration, and experiment the manifold and diverse ways in which we engage with decolonization and its forms of knowledges.

We invite contributions from interested scholars (from history and humanities, sociology and anthropology, international law and all relevant disciplines), educators, collectives, and other practitioners whose research and work corresponds with any one or more of the axes outlined above. Furthermore, as part of our larger series aims to facilitate conversations and collaborations across disciplinary and academic boundaries, we encourage contributions in a variety of forms including the textual (working paper, dissertation chapter), visual (poster, collage), oral (podcast, interview) and so on. In this regard, we would like to consider the emancipatory potential that engaging with different “forms” of knowledges – in particular the “digital” – might have in creatively making accessible knowledge systems spurred by an anti-colonial pedagogy. While remaining cautious to how the “digital” might reproduce structural conditions of inequality in knowledge production and dissemination, we harbor the hope that the tools of the digital humanities – digitization, modeling, visualization – can be harnessed to produce transnational communities of emancipatory knowledge.

We invite interested candidates to either send us an abstract of their proposed contribution (approximately 300 words), along with a three-four sentence bio to Nicolas Hafner by Friday, 21st February 2025. For candidates who feel their proposed contributions might not fit the form of a 300-word abstract, we are open to understanding your proposed contribution in a different way – for instance through a video abstract, excerpt from interview/podcast, website, portfolio etc. (in which case please get in touch with us by Friday, 14th February 2025). We aim to inform candidates of our decision by the end of March.

The workshop will take place at the Geneva Graduate Institute, Switzerland, on Monday, 12 and Tuesday, 13 May 2025. We aim to have the final program prepared by mid-April and expect participants to share their contributions with their assigned discussant (and if comfortable with the group) by the end of April.

Reimbursement of travel and accommodation expenses related to the workshop will be considered for participants who may need it. Please state in your email whether you will need funding.
Contact Information

Nicolas Hafner, Swiss National Science Foundation Doc.CH Researcher, Department of International History and Politics, The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva