Sara Ewing Goldsmiths, University of LondonThe speaker hosts workshops that situate Western academic research in historical, political and social conditions that are tied to colonial practices of difference and hierarchy. They are centred on participants’ ideas, assumptions, experiences and values in relation to different themes, in conjunction with short non-traditional texts, to provoke meaningful and unexpected discussions. These workshops align with the Goldsmiths goal to ‘Liberate Our Degree’ by addressing the inequalities embedded in pedagogy and curricula. Current collaborations include library staff working with procurement, reading lists and library practices, lecturers in various departments seeking to diversify their curriculum design, and students invested in decolonizing their own programmes.

1. SARA EWING,
GOLDSMITHS,
UNIVERSITY OF
LONDON
Decolonising
Research
Methods

2. My background
• Community Organizations
• Applied Linguistics
• Public Policy
• Research Methods
• English for Academic Purposes

3. Decolonizing
Research Methods
Background
Western philosophy
Research practices
Student assessments

4. Current workshop themes:
1. The Enlightenment 5. Education
2. History 6. Religion
3. Borders 7. Gender
4. Language 8. Activism

5. • Generate and reflect on ideas and experiences.
• Discuss attitudes, assumptions and motivations that
underpin academic study and research practices.
• Engage with marginalized peoples’ writing/ideas.
• Analyse our values related to these contexts.

6. Generating ideas
What is research? Who does it?
Who is it for? What is it for?
What is a curriculum? What are
the links between research and
curricula?

7. Reading
Mark words/phrases indicating:
• Visibility/invisibility
• Centre/margins
What other groups can you think of?

8. “epistemic disobedience”
Mignolo 2009
• Critically responding to and disrupting norms
• Highlighting and deconstructing Western
epistemological foundations
• Challenging hierarchies of legitimacy

9. “Rewriting and rerighting”
Smith 2012
• Make visible
• Allow to be heard
• Change how meaning is made
• Ideas, experiences, values, relationships,
individuals, groups

10. General strands of work
• Pedagogy
• Reading lists
• Curricula

11. Pedagogy
• No PowerPoint slides or prepared talking points
• Directed tasks to generate/link ideas
• Individual reflection and small group discussion
• Discussions mapped out on whiteboard

15. Positive Outcomes
• Re-centre the classroom interactions
• Remove the authority of the lecturer
• Allow many voices to be heard and validated
• Link participants’ ideas and experiences to theory
• Classes are actively co-produced

16. Challenges
• Vulnerability of removing academic authority
• Managing student expectations
• Highly personal responses and disagreements
• Classes are unpredictable

17. Reading Lists
• What is included?
• What is excluded?
• What is essential reading?
• What is additional reading?

18. Decolonising Research Methods
https://rl.talis.com/3/gold/lists/E401036B-
D4D2-0E03-778B-B9BACBA97D01.html
Decolonising the Modern World
https://rl.talis.com/3/gold/lists/DD0641A4-
1770-E41E-ECD4-C87F3948C2A3.html

20. How do readings get on the list?
Suggestions from:
• My own research
• Students
• Lecturers
• External individuals

21. Curricula
• Anthropology: working to recentre alternative or
non-canonical narratives and theories
• Sociology: embedding Decolonizing Research
Methods into a core module
• Open Book: dedicated workshops to explore
themes related to students’ assessments

22. Liberate our Library
• Discovery team procures resources
• Subject team engages with students
• Reading list team creates TALIS lists
• Web team adds tags, etc.
• Student Union directly advocates

23. The organization of systems is
of central importance
• Expectations of classroom interactions
• Structure of curricula
• Classification and categorization of knowledge
• Historical and ideological orientations
We must destabilize these systems

24. Critical research practices:
• Motivate a necessary intervention
• Reconsider the classifications of knowledge
• Disrupt the hierarchies embedded in research
and curricula
• Reimagine social identities and relationships