By Luqman Muraina / part of our “Share your Decolonising Story” project
I completed my B.Sc. Sociology in Nigeria with little or no knowledge about alternative epistemologies, coloniality, and politics of knowledge. Like many young graduates fed by modernity’s shine, I was just determined to be successful and contribute positively to societal development and transformation.
Continue reading “Decolonial Journey: #RhodesMustFall and ‘Decolonising Development Studies’ in Ghana and Nigeria”
Interview with Aram Ziai, Chair of Development and Postcolonial Studies, University of Kassel, Germany / part of our “Share your Decolonising Story” project
Professor Aram Ziai is an academic who has been writing on Post-Development for over 20 years. His work is all centred around decolonising the sector – and on how colonial injustices are still effective in our day-to-day life. He is also Executive Director of the Global Partnership Network, which has been explicitly set up to try to decolonise international cooperation and knowledge production as far as the structures of the ‘development industry’ will allow.
Continue reading “Transforming the International Development Cooperation System – Mission Impossible?”
By Amitabha Sarkar / part of our “Share your Decolonising Story” project
I grew up in a family shaped by the complexities of colonial misadventure in Calcutta, a refugee past marked by economic hardship and structural violence. For my mother, merit was the only way out. She believed that humility, hard work, and academic excellence could open doors that history had closed. As a child and young adult in South Asia, I absorbed this moral ideal without question.
Continue reading “Merit, Meritocracy, and Decolonising Knowledge for Development”
By Marine Gauthier / part of our “Share your Decolonising Story” project
My engagement with international development has always been entangled with postcolonial sensitivities—an awareness shaped by my Belgian family’s colonial past, my academic training on North-South relations in environmental governance, and my own professional trajectory which started in Senegal as the only white development worker in a national NGO. Yet, despite this awareness, I found myself deeply embedded in the very structures I sought to critique.
Continue reading “Decolonizing Expertise: Reflections on Power, Knowledge, and Governance in International Organizations (IOs)”
By Eyob Balcha Gebremariam / part of our “Share your Decolonising Story” project
I write this reflection piece to use my personal experiences as a UK-based academic with an Ethiopian passport as a lens to comment on the structural power asymmetries of the academic landscape. I believe I’m not the only one facing these challenges. However, there is hardly sufficient attention, recognition, and space to discuss them. I have no intention of reducing the importance of other challenges by focusing on these three topics. I focused on the three hurdles because I experience them in everyday scholarly work and am determined to engage in critical discussions and reflections.
Continue reading “Epistemic (Ir)relevance, Language & Passport Positionality”
