Workshop ‘Current Trends, Uncommon Paths: Decolonising the Academia through Feminism‘

13.01.2022 - 14.01.2022

University of Vienna, Department of African Studies

13th-14th of January 2022

via Zoom

Decolonisation as a process has long ceased to refer only to the ‘official’ withdrawal of European colonial powers from various parts of the world. Rather, the concept of decolonisation is increasingly used and reinterpreted to refer to the inequalities and power mechanisms that guide our world, to challenge them, and thus to open up new debates. This concept can be stretched and formed and used in new ways, like movements such as ‘Rhodes must fall’ indicate.

In the academic world, the desire for decolonisation has launched a number of initiatives globally in recent years to liberate university education from a one-sided orientation to 'Western' institutions and knowledge traditions and to open it up to knowledge that has been and continues to be marginalised by old and new imperialisms: Decolonise the curriculum! Decolonise education! Decolonise the academia!

This should, of course, include the dismantling of gender hierarchies and a transformation of patriarchal concepts/notions of gender. A number of feminist researchers such as María Lugones (Toward a Decolonial Feminism, 2010), Chandra Talpade Mohanty (Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity, 2003) or Sylvia Tamale (Decolonization and Afro-Feminism, 2020) have laid the foundations for a decolonial feminist approach in the academia. They emphasize that ‘gender’ and ‘coloniality/raciality’ cannot be treated separately, but must be seen intertwined and interactive. As Tamale argues for the decolonisation of universities in Africa, this cannot be limited to changing the curriculum, but needs to address research policy, the inclusion of diversity, didactic methods as well as the institutional ethos, i.e. the fundamental culture of the university. Changes at one level without considering the other layers will remain incomplete. In all these layers, as she further shows, gender is critically involved.

In this workshop we would like to highlight ideas, approaches and implementations of decolonisation at universities in Africa as well as in Europe from a feminist perspective. In doing so, we link to an understanding of feminism as holistic, social transformation shaped by African thinkers and women of colour, which challenges ‘all forms of domination, in particular as they relate to patriarchy, race, class, sexuality and global imperialism’ (Decolonization and Afro-Feminism, 2020, xiii).

Taking this understanding as an inspiration for this workshop, we aspire to make room for current trends and innovative ways of challenging and transforming the academia through decolonial feminist thought and practice. As key question we want to pose:
How do we make the intellectual work of women – in particular Women of Colour – in these different levels of decolonisation visible?

Please register via lisa.tackie@univie.ac.at to participate in the Workshop!

Programme (.pdf)

Organising Team
Martina Kopf, Department of African Studies: martina.kopf@univie.ac.at
Lisa Tackie, Department of African Studies: lisa.tackie@univie.ac.at

FWF-project V554-G23 on Concepts of development in postcolonial Kenyan literature and
Department of African Studies, University of Vienna