Sumários
Knowledge Production (II): How do we know? Decolonising research methodologies.
3 Novembro 2025, 16:30 • Thomas Gerhard Erich Muhr
Since Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s Decolonizing Methodologies (1999), decolonising or Indigenising research methodologies has gained in momentum in theory and practice. This session introduced students to key arguments, underlying onto-epistemic assumptions (e.g., claims to objectivity of knowledge), as well as empirical methods/techniques. My research Participatory action research (PAR) in a Venezuelan barrio illustrated some of the decolonial methodological considerations.
Knowledge Production (I): What do we know? The geopolitics of hegemonic knowledge making.
28 Outubro 2025, 16:30 • Thomas Gerhard Erich Muhr
Student presentations. Presentation texts:
Collyer, F. M. (2018). Global patterns in the publishing of academic knowledge. Current Sociology, 66(1), 56–73.
Lynch, R., Young, J. C., Jowaisas, C., Sam, J., Boakye-Achampong, S., Garrido, M., & Rothschild, C. (2023). ‘The tears don’t give you funding’: Data neocolonialism in development in the Global South. Third World Quarterly, 44(5), 911–929.
Knowledge Production (I): What do we know? The geopolitics of hegemonic knowledge making.
27 Outubro 2025, 16:30 • Thomas Gerhard Erich Muhr
This session served to take a closer look at the hierarchical, colonial power structure inherent in the production of knowledge. This included scrutinising the geopolitical global division of labour regarding knowledge production (e.g., the North as a generator/provider of theory and methodology, the South as a consumer of these and site for fieldwork and knowledge extraction); how European knowledge became universalised; and the role of the European university in producing knowledge about ‘the other’, which legitimated colonisation from early on, and the role of the North/West-dominated global neoliberal corporate university regime in reproducing coloniality (e.g., global ‘league tables of universities, North-centric publishing, citation and evaluation practices/patterns).
Mapping decolonial struggle and thought in a colonised world
7 Outubro 2025, 16:30 • Thomas Gerhard Erich Muhr
Student presentations. Presentation texts:
Mapping decolonial struggle and thought in a colonised world
6 Outubro 2025, 16:30 • Thomas Gerhard Erich Muhr
Development of a more systematic understanding of global South liberation struggle and thought over space:time, in their anti-colonial, post-colonial and decolonial manifestations. Centred around the conceptual difference between de/colonisation and de/coloniality, we discussed the decolonial school of thought as a broad, cross- or transdisciplinary movement that bridges (has the potential to bridge) the divisions between the materialist and culturalist paradigms towards understanding and acting upon the world.