Unraveling Colonialism and Injustice: Advancing Critical Approaches in Anti-Colonial Scholarship
Anger, Gratitude, and Joy: Inquiring Colonial Legacies and Liberation in Portuguese Higher Education Psychology Through a Decolonial Approach to a Literature Review
Abstract
This paper, a part of a doctoral literature review, delves into the lived experiences of racialised students in Portuguese Higher Education psychology. It does so by emphasising the significance of a decolonial and relational approach.
This approach, incorporating anger, gratitude, and joy as mobilising factors of experience, seeks to propose alternatives in the review process of knowledge.
It considers the relationships between the researcher and knowledge, people, and academia, thereby disrupting epistemology based on extractive practices.
Instead, it privileges ancestral ways of knowing, reciprocity, and acknowledgement of people theorising from the margins.
This approach is part of a doctoral inquiry centred on psychic revolt, epistemic disobedience and restitution, dreaming and dialogue, and offering alternatives to exclusionary academic practices.
Oriented by relationality, it conceptualises the experiences of racialised students in Portuguese higher education psychology. This approach contributes to the ongoing project of decolonising psychology education and conducting literature reviews and offers alternative ways of knowing.
Keywords: Colonial Legacy, Racism Denial, Liberation Psychology, Decoloniality, Dreaming, Dialogue, Epistemic restitution
The Challenging Realities of Black Doctoral Students’ Lived Experiences in the UK, Viewed Through a Decolonising Lens
Abstract
In the past few decades, there has been a slow but steady progression of improved access, attainment and participation of Black students in higher education in the UK. This has been driven by a myriad of factors, from grassroots activism, to campaigning, political pressure, and organisational initiatives to improve the representation of Black and marginalised groups. This has seemingly been a net positive, yet something is missing in how some of these initiatives and changes are implemented and in the very foundation of how they understand and frame these challenges. This missing element is even more obvious when analysing the state of doctoral-level studies.
Dynamic Inter-Cultural Comprehension Extended from Sports to Research on World Christianities
Abstract
This article builds on my experience with intercultural miscommunication in East Africa. I use an extended metaphor of sports terminology to show how translation between languages is often misleading and unhelpful. Some things just cannot be understood, when the cultural backgrounds are different. In intercultural communication, with sports used to graphically illustrate what happens, the following lessons are learned:
- One term can have different meanings, depending on the cultural context.
- Understanding is affected when objectives are different.
- Translation is unhelpful when the translator is unfamiliar with the cultural context of the language being translated into.
- What seems wrong in one context, may actually be correct in another context.
- Initial impressions arising from particular perspectives may be “wrong” but may nevertheless be foundational to what comes later.
- Unfamiliar processes should be accepted as legitimate as long as the common endpoint remains in view.
This article concludes that a comparison between sports may be a good model to help missiologists and researchers on World Christianities to better understand intercultural communication and research.
The Lingering Echoes of Colonialism: How Colonial Ideologies Shape the Current Status of Art Education Policies in Primary Schools of India
Abstract
The lingering echo of colonial education policies haunts the post-independence narrative of art classes in primary education.
This study examines the enduring influence of colonial ideologies on the creativity and self-expression of youth in India.
Examining the dissonance between the rhetoric of postcolonial liberation and the reality of curriculum and pedagogical practices, the study exposes how colonial anxieties concerning aesthetics, art pedagogy, and art practices still etch parental expectations and school administration's approaches to art education.
This study investigates the relationship between contemporary art pedagogy in primary schools and its origins in the colonial period.
Informed by the theoretical lens of postcolonialism, particularly the works of Edward Said and Shehla Burney (2012), the research adopts a historical inquiry methodology.
In-depth analysis of archival materials, research papers, and related documents—coordinated with document analysis of official policies and school curricula—illuminates micro-practices that perpetuate colonial ideologies.
The findings suggest that emphasising aesthetically pleasing artistic production, as standardised by adult expectations, inhibits authentic creative exploration and critical thinking—essential skills for 21st-century learners.
This research transcends a mere cue of the past by envisioning a decolonised art education and advocates pedagogical frameworks that nurture agency, cultural sensitivity, and the freedom to experiment.
Keywords: Postcolonialism, Educational Policies, Curriculum and Pedagogy, 21st-century skills, Art Education, Decolonisation
Decolonising Categorisations of Violence: A Critique of the “Religious” and “Secular” Divide
Abstract
International relations theory has seen considerable debate regarding the inclusion of “religious” as a category of analysis when attempting to understand acts of violence, which led to questioning the dichotomy between what is considered religious violence in opposition to secular violence.
This paper presents a decolonial critique of the categorising violence that occurs via this false dichotomy, by asserting that it is an extension of colonial processes of othering that exacerbates further violence.
The process of defining the religious other is rooted in a Eurocentric 17th century understanding of what religion is, resulting in discriminatory attitudes towards groups that are religiously and ethnically different from what is familiar to the Eurocentric self.
The insistence on solidifying the divide between the secular self and the religious other is a continuation of the colonial process of othering, only that now it positions the other as radical religious extremist, in opposition to the civilised, democratic “Western” self.
I will specifically focus on how this dichotomy is constructed and reproduced for the political purpose of legitimising state violence via neoliberal foreign intervention, as well as for the discrimination of racialised groups in domestic policy in the global north, particularly immigrants and Muslims.
Taking France as an empirical case study, I call into question the need to categorise types of violence and argue for a detachment from these categorisations in order to carve new conceptual spaces free from the constraints of coloniality in academia and beyond.
Decolonizing Journalistic Knowledge: Deliberative Communication in Central and Eastern EU Member States by Oller-Alonso, Martin (2024)
Decolonizing Journalistic Knowledge: Deliberative Communication in Central and Eastern EU Member States by Oller-Alonso, Martin (2024)
Decolonial Subversions Reading Group