Towards Decolonised Futures: An interdisciplinary conference challenging the politics of knowing and being

From the toppling of slave-trader Edward Colston’s statue in Bristol in early June 2020 to renewed demands to decolonise the (higher) education curriculum, the indignation following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis prompted a global movement aiming at reversing social injustices and inequalities generated by slavery, settlerism and colonialism.

Among scholars, postcolonialism and decolonisation have attracted great interest. From the earlier writings of Fanon and Said, to more recent contributions by scholars such as Quijano, Mignolo or Spivak, academic research has challenged Western dominance over knowledge production and its devaluation of indigenous ways of knowing and being.

This has great relevance for practitioners working in a variety of fields, including education, social work, international development and humanitarian assistance.

This conference aims to further deconstruct and unravel the notion of one universal way of knowing and being, focusing on the different ways of knowing (epistemic plurality) of those who are traditionally silenced and excluded from power – in academic terms often referred to as the ‘sub-altern’ or ‘the historically muted subject of the non-elite’ (Spivak 1999).