Decolonising research
Decolonising Research: Tackling obstacles and working through challenges
A new IGDC working paper examines the opportunities and challenges confronting those looking to decolonise their research practice. While an extensive body of work has already debated the nature and necessity of decolonising research, this paper focuses on three challenges decolonisation can present: to research partnerships, methods, and impact. The working paper offers a toolkit of key questions researchers can work through to identify and then overcome or manage these challenges.
IGDC-UFBA Decolonising Development Research podcast series
The IGDC has received funds from the University of York’s Enhancing Research Culture fund to develop a podcast series in partnership with UFBA on the theme of decolonizing global development research.
Why do we need to decolonise global development research?
What are the potential benefits or pitfalls of research decolonisation through participatory research methods?
Shining a light on a fundamental yet often obscured aspect of decolonising research - the concept of positionality and its inherent power dynamics
A look at the colonial character of established research practices and explains why they should be decolonised.
How can researchers decolonise their work? What steps can be taken in terms of partnerships, methods, and impact? And what challenges does decolonisation raise for researchers?
Against Decolonisation: On Africa's Place in the Global Circuit of Ideas
Professor Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò builds on the arguments in his latest book "Against Decolonisation: Taking African Agency Seriously", which provides an intellectual and moral critique of today’s decolonisation movement. He argues that 'decolonisation' has lost its way. Originally a struggle to escape the West’s direct political and economic control, it has become a catch-all idea, suffocating African thought and denying African agency.
Uma Kothari’s Towards decoloniality and justice
IGDC Annual Lecture 2023
Watch the recorded lecture - Professor Kothari explains why conceiving of the past as irrelevant has had devastating consequences for justice.
Jon Ensor, IGDC Director, discusses four broad themes which came out of 2023's Annual Lecture.
In conversation with Dr Linda Tuhiwai Smith
The groundbreaking book 'Decolonising Methodologies Research and Indigenous Peoples' (1998) by Dr Linda Tuhiwai Smith is not only an international bestseller, but a foundational resource for critiques of the existing relationship between imperialism, dominant approaches to scientific research and Indigenous knowledge systems.
Guide to good practice for inclusive research in global development
This guide is intended primarily as a resource to help researchers in the Global North consider how to organise and conduct research with Global South partners.