Decolonizing the Curriculum, Part 1: the perspective of a higher education expert (with Prof. Azumah Dennis)

In the first two episodes our guest speakers Professor Azumah Dennis and Professor Koen Bogaert reflect on the influence of colonialism on higher education. 

Professor Azumah Dennis is a senior lecturer who specializes in higher education and is program director for professional doctorates at the Open University in the United Kingdom. Koen Bogaert is an assistant professor at the faculty of conflict and development of the University of Ghent in Belgium, and a member of the Middle East and North Africa Research Group. Our guest speakers talk about the colonial traces in our curriculum and how to combat them through positioning and contextualizing all the authors and perspectives in the curriculum. They highlight the importance of thinking about one's own positionality while teaching and the acknowledgment of it. Furthermore, they word their aspiration and hopes for the future regarding the decolonization of the curriculum. These two first episodes are meant to challenge listeners to give thought to their own ideas of ‘neutrality’ and ‘objectivity’ and how those ideas are related to the colonial knowledge system.

The second episode drops in March 2022. 

Meaning of positionality

A key concept in this podcast is positionality. Positioning yourself refers to recognizing that you don’t speak and talk from a place of a disembodied neutrality (Dennis, 2018). It is acknowledging that your position in the world – your race, culture, gender, class background etc. - shapes your experiences and thus influence the themes you choose to talk about and the perspective that you use to talk about them. This concept can/should be used to oppose the idea that whiteness equals being unmarked, neutral and objective. White (male) scholars have had the privilege to present themselves in their work as unmarked scholars, scholars without a race, gender, or culture, scholars who are the norm. This is what is called the privilege of neutrality. This concept is used to debunk the myth of neutrality and to put everyone and their work in their appropriate context.  

Meaning of epistemology

Epistemology refers to what is considered knowledge, about what knowledge can be formed, and how we can come to that knowledge (Meghji, 2021). Epistemology is important in academic knowledge construction but the development of certain epistemological regimes in academia has not been independent of the development of colonialism. Western epistemology has reproduced and still reproduces colonial myths and knowledge. In this context, Western epistemology obtained worldwide a hegemonic position in academia that inhibited non-western epistemologies. Decolonization of the academia also means a search for a plurality of epistemologies in scientific and political praxis (Bhambra, Gebrial & Nişancıoğlu, 2018). In that way decolonization challenges the myth that the Western Universities are the only epistemological authorities. Decolonization promotes a horizontal, reflexive, conversational approach to different epistemologies (Meghji, 2021). The inclusion of perspectives from the global south in knowledge production is crucial for the decolonization of science and its practices. 

In this episode you heard our guest Prof. Azumah Dennis and our host Ellen Vandenbulcke.

Produced and written by Lien Steyaert and Ellen Vandenbulcke
Edited by Lien Steyaert