ACUSAfrica Network: Advancing Critical University Studies Across Africa
ACUSAfrica is a newly established network and online hub established to foreground and collaborate on scholarship for advancing Critical University Studies across Africa, in dialogue with scholarship from across the global South and excluded North. Through the critical study of higher education, the endeavour is “to find ‘other’ ways to study universities which are capable of thinking plural forms of emancipatory higher education imaginations and futures”. Developed as a tangible collective from discussions and activities during the Winter School on “Advancing critical university studies for emancipatory imaginations” held in 2019 in South Africa, the network currently has more than 60 active members. The online hub aims to be a dialectical space from which to share research, events, reflections and learning content more widely and reflexively. Contributions are organised around questions of Critical University Studies in Africa; Critical University Studies Around the World; Impact in Critical University Studies; Reflexivity in Critical University Studies. For further information and to subscribe to calls, contributions and news as it happens, please visit the ACUSAfrica website: https://www.acusafrica.com/.
Concrete Blossom Network
Concrete Blossom is a network and social media platform for thought provokers, iconoclasts and mediators who self-define as “social-change accelerators,” striving to make positive improvements towards greater fusion and inclusivity in our societies. Based in Rotterdam (Netherlands), their activism and creativity as artists and urbanists centres around the concept of “the transitioning city,” and involves creating spaces for collaboration, change and reciprocity with arts organisations in the Netherlands, and beyond. Some of the online and offline interventions enacted by Concrete Blossom to address issues of inclusion, equalities and social justice include: “Rewrite the Institute” [#RewritetheInstitute] and “’Decolonizing Public Space’ Through Our Shared Past and Joint Future” [‘Decolonising Public Space’ Door Gedeeld Verleden Gezamenlijke Toekomst]. For further information, visit https://www.concreteblossom.org; search for the network on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms; or email info@concreteblossom.com.
Website: https://www.concreteblossom.org/
Convivial Thinking Collective
The Convivial Thinking Collective is an open group of scholars, who are committed towards thinking, engaging and writing on the issues that are associated with postcolonial and decolonial approaches within the perspectives of development, development studies and beyond. The collective believes that with respect to teaching and research in development studies, the theoretical and practical exercises of postcolonial and decolonial thinking have remained highly underestimated. The term conviviality has been used in different contexts to date. For the collective the term is understood as “mutual respect for each other and the natural world and assuming joint responsibility for the ways we live, we act, we engage.” With respect to this understanding, Convivial Thinking makes an effort to deterritorialize and de/re-center the debates on development by inculcating those voices, art pieces, opinions that get silenced or lost in the hierarchical spaces of publications.
The efforts are undertaken through various forms of written and acoustic activities like critical blogs (short research articles), creative blogs (paintings, poems, etc.), webinars, reading circles, podcasts and pedagogical engagements. Apart from organizing activities within the collective, it also invites enthusiasts (individually as well as collectively) from outside the collective to organize collaborative oral and written activities. Recently, the collective has also created a separate section titled “Meshworks of Solidarity” to introduce different like-minded initiatives and struggles that are taking place across the globe. To know more about the collective and to collaborate with us please visit the following link: https://www.convivialthinking.org/.
Follow them on twitter: @thinkconvivial
Decolonial Futures
Decolonial Futures is an open access platform which provides a wide range of decolonial resources to support artistic and research partners with focus on the Brazilian and Canadian contexts: https://decolonialfutures.net
Decolonising LSE Collective
Decolonising LSE collective is a group of students, academic, professional services staff and alumni who collaborate and work together to open up and sustain discussions around decolonial praxis across the London School of Economics and Political Sciences, and beyond. You can visit their website at the following link: https://decolonisinglse.wordpress.com
Decolonial International Network
Decolonial International Network is a space devoted to discuss and share progressive knowledge about the theory and practice of decolonial thinking.
The network is directed and coordinated by Sandew Hira who overlooks the site through promotion and publicity, communication and networking, setting up social justice campaigns and projects, organising summer schools and courses and seeking support and solidarity within the network and beyond.
Decolonial Studies Research Network
The DSRN was founded by a group of scholars of the Decolonial Studies Program affiliated to the University of the Philippines Center for Integrative and Development Studies and with close collaboration with the Philippine International Studies Organization (PHISO). The aim of the network is to connect scholars, practitioners, students and researchers to open up conversations around the impact of modernity and coloniality on Global South institutions through critical and comparative cross-cross-disciplnary analyses involving inputs from Global North institutions, too. For more information about the network, you are welcome to consult it at the following link: https://decolonial.network
Decolonizing Sexualities Network(DSN)
The Decolonizing Sexualities Network (DSN) emerged from ‘Decolonise Queer’ (DQ) which was first established after a transnational workshop held in Berlin in 2010. The event was organised by a number of queer/trans people of colour (qtpoc) and allies involved in local anti-racism and other social justice work in European cities and beyond. Many of these people are now key figures in the emerging field of decolonial sexuality studies.
The aim of the 2010 Berlin workshop was to develop links and conversations between us which eventually led to the formation of the formal network and since then they have continued to come together as scholars, activists and civil society practitioners from different geographical locations. DSN work on the diverse ways in which sexuality and gender (identity) can converge with religious and racialised identities to produce multiple exclusions and socio-economic disadvantage as well as political marginalisation. They secured UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Research Networking funding for the phase of work from 2012 to 2016 which led to the edited collection: ‘Decolonizing Sexualities: Decolonizing Sexualities: Transnational Perspectives, Critical Interventions’ which is available in paperback and to download on a pay-what-you-can basis.
Thier most recent publication is a special issue of the Journal Interventions:
Jivraj, S. Bakshi, S. Posocco, S. 2020. ‘Decolonial Trajectories: Praxes and Challenges’. Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies. Issue 22. Vol 4. https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/riij20/current
You can also follow them and check out their multi-genre work from their decolonial cafes, and guest contributions most recently for our life-sensing series on their blog: https://decolonizingsexualities.com/
Dyslexicacademic
Dyslexicacademic.com is a digital space for and by learning-different academics respond to the silences in the academy concerning learning differences including ( but not limited to) dyslexia,dyspraxia,dyscalculia,autism spectrum disorder,Irlene syndrome, attention deficit disorder, synaesthesia and aphantasia. Dyslexic academic is building reflections through blogposts and podcast through counter narratives of thriving,surviving and imagining a learning-different academy while acknowleding how the structure of the academy ‘disables’ neurodivergent people. Through this space, as Kate West, editor of the digital space surmises ‘.. learning-different academics reflect on strategies of resistance and empowerment that are characteristically creative because of our learning differances’.
Exeter Decolonising Network
The Exeter Decolonising Network was set up in July 2019 by a collective of staff across disciplines who recognised the need to explore, share and nurture decolonial teaching and research methods across the University. It has grown to include community members across the South-West area interrogating decolonisation in their own practices. Our Network draws together a plurality of approaches to decolonial praxis in research, pedagogy, care and community engagement. We hold regular events, student-led initiatives, reflexive discussions and public engagement which we share on this page and on social media. You can follow them on Twitter: @exeterdecol
Pravini- The Uprising
Pravini Baboeram is a Dutch-Indian singer/songwriter activist who espouses a decolonial lens in her works, projects and music. She produced a music documentary called ‘The Uprising’ which highlights self-determination and resistance of People of Colour against racism in Europe. To do so, Pravini collected inspiring stories from academics and activists based in France, United Kingdom and The Netherlands. Such stories were shared with openness and honesty to understand the depth of colonialism, racism and their implications on our current societies as well as a message of hope and love to move forward and re-imagine a different future grounded in an anti-racist and decolonial movement. The movie contains nine chapters which is accessible here. Pravini is also developing an Educational Toolkit based on the film for educators to engage people in the process of decolonising the mind. The toolkit will be available next September. her Twitter handle provides more information about the toolkit and her work in general.
Project Myopia
In December 2016, Rianna Walcott and Toby Sharpe were awarded an Innovation Initiative Grant by the University of Edinburgh Development Trust to create ‘Project Myopia’, connecting globally disparate people with concerns about education reform. Now funded by the London Arts and Humanities Partnership (LAHP), this website is devoted to diversifying university curricula through crowdsourcing material from students, revolutionising the way that curricula are designed. The group plan to display regular submissions of material (visual, literary, cinematic, musical, etc). students feel their curricula would benefit from, focused on increasing diversity. These submissions take the form of semi-academic personal essays between 750-1000 words, explaining the work, its relevance to the reviewer’s personal experience, and most importantly where this work could fit on a university curriculum and why it is worthy of study. Their contributors are based in a range of countries, and the collective hopes that this project will have a global impact in revolutionising pedagogical practices.
If you would like to contribute with artwork or a review, please email us at projectmyopia@gmail.com with your name, institution (if applicable), and how you would like to get involved!
Twitter @projectmyopia
Decolonial Dialogues 