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”
By Lyla Mehta
Since the Brundtland Commission advanced the concept of sustainable development in 1987, a lively strand in Development Studies (DS) has engaged with the linkages between environment, sustainability and development. This remained fairly niche until the 2030 Agenda and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) goals mainstreamed sustainable development.
Continue reading “The Challenges of Decolonising Sustainability and the Environment in Development Studies”
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 Carla Maria Friederike Diem / part of our “Share your Decolonising Story” project
“I hope for a world where International Development Studies cease to exist.” was the first line of my motivation letter to the University of Amsterdam (UvA). A provocation, yes – but also a belief. A way to signal that I saw the contradictions at the heart of the discipline – that a field born out of colonial legacies, and sustained by the hierarchies it claims to dismantle, cannot be reformed without eventually ceasing to exist. I thought this was an idealistic position. What I did not realise was just how intimately I would come to feel the weight of those contradictions – in my emotions, in my learning, and in my hope.
Continue reading “Feeling the Colonial: Affective Decolonisation in Development Studies Classrooms”
