Date

15 October 2019

Where

Chancellor’s Building 3.15
University of Bath

Speaker

Ana C Dinerstein
Luisa Enria
María José Ventura Alfaro

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This event marks the official launch of the new pop-up research cluster ‘Decolonising Knowledge in theory and practice' (DECkNO), Department of Social and Policy Sciences, with talks by Dr Ana Cecilia Dinerstein, Dr Luisa Enria and María José Ventura Alfaro (ESRC MPhil/PhD Candidate). The event will be held as part of the SPS Research Seminar Series and is sponsored by the Standing Seminary in Critical Theory (SSCT).

The term decolonising is rapidly conquering several academic as well as practitioner and activist domains, acquiring new meanings that depart from those identified with anti-colonial political struggles for liberation. While there is a risk of using the term decolonial as a ‘metaphor for the things we want to do to improve our societies’ (Tuck and Yang 2012), decolonial discourses are exposing the limitations of social sciences to understand the Eurocentrism that prevails in social sciences. We are witnessing the growing importance of a plural movement that demands the decolonisation of knowledge in the modern University for it can have a positive impact on the learning process as well as on other spheres of society, leading to social transformation.

DECkNO aims to open a space to deconstruct and unlearn the Eurocentric episteme of social sciences and to enrich sociological theory and research practice by means of the creation of what Professor Boaventura de Sousa Santos calls an ‘ecology of knowledges’ that exist in the world.

The speakers will present the main ideas behind the creation of DECkNO pop-up cluster, including aims, objectives, networks and plans and will discuss in what ways the idea of decolonising knowledge informs their theoretical and empirical research (work in progress).

For more information please click here.