Epistemologies of the Global South (EpiGloS)
Led by Dr Ananya Mishra, Dr Swati Arora (School of the Arts) and Dr Valentina Aparicio, the project launched an innovative hub for enhancing decolonial research and aesthetic practices of global south researchers and collaborators, creating a vibrant, interdisciplinary space where the urgent calls for decolonisation in Higher Education could be addressed through creative, critical and participatory methodologies. Supported by Enhancing Research and Innovation Cultures Fund 2023 - 24, it invited participation from researchers across London and the UK.
Global South Epistemologies: Interdisciplinary symposium
An interactive roundtable gathering on 15 March 2024 invited participation from ECRs, postdocs, as well as PhD students working on the global South in various Schools at QMUL as well as from researchers based elsewhere in the UK. Through participatory, creative and critical discussions facilitated by Ananya, Swati and Valentina, it articulated the politics and ethics of research ‘on’ the global south. Readings included:
- Kwame, A. (2017). Reflexivity and the insider/outsider discourse in indigenous research: my personal experiences. AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 13(4), 218-225.
- Innes, R. A. (2009). “Wait a Second. Who Are You Anyways?” The Insider/Outsider Debate and American Indian Studies. American Indian Quarterly, 33(4), 440–461.
Writing retreats
Building on the ongoing reading group and symposium activities, we organised eight writing retreats at Anson Room, St. Margaret’s House between April and July 2024. Participants were supported in their writing, carving out a much needed supportive, dedicated space with institutional and intellectual support to finish long writing projects.
Methods as/and Extraction: Workshop
Taking place at Royal Foundation of St Katherine’s, an interdisciplinary one-day workshop took place on 17 May 2024. Facilitated by Diana Salazar (Lecturer in Landscape Architecture at UCL and Latin America Co-ordinator at London Mining Network), it enabled participants to reflect on research methods from the global South and how they inform research and collaboration between different disciplines. We discussed modelling inclusive modes of collaboration, which were then implemented through collaborative writing exercises. Pre-readings included:
- Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui. “Ch’ixinakax utxiwa: A Reflection on the Practices and Discourses of Decolonization”. Translated by Molly Geidel. Polity, 2020.
- Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and Naomi Klein, “Nishnaabeg Anticapitalism”,
As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2017.
- The Magic of Responsibility (https://londonminingnetwork.org/2021/04/magic-of-responsibility-comic/?highlight=comic)
Discussions on methods and/as extraction were documented digitally during the workshop session, resulting in a co-created decolonial toolkit.
Poetry reading and performance
In collaboration with the Centre for Contemporary Writing, QMUL and Dr Kate Lewis Hood, we organised a public-facing poetry reading event on 19 June 2024 at BLOC, Arts One building at QMUL. The panel included acclaimed global South and Indigenous poets and performers including Ariana Tikao, Prerana Kumar, and Carlos Mauricio Rojas. The event was attended by forty people, creating an exciting space of collaboration and dialogue between creative writers and researchers in Indigenous, and Global South studies and the general public.
Reading Groups
In collaboration with Centre for Indigenous and Settler Colonial Studies (CISCS, based in Universities of Kent, York, London College of Communications U.K. and Alberta, Canada), Dr Ananya Mishra co-convened five online reading group sessions organised as part of CISCS Theory and Method Reading Group 2024. Two sessions titled “Land/Body/ Knowledge” and “Resistance and Political Identities”, focused on Adivasi and Global South theories and methods.