Valuing experiential knowledge, integrating local languages into the research process and reimagining identities.

These are some of the approaches four Brock University researchers shared at the recent “Black and African Scholars: The Importance of Decolonizing Research” online panel discussion.

Co-organized by Human Rights and Equity (HRE) and the Office of the Vice-President, Research (OVPR), the Feb. 12 event explored the role and impact of decolonization in research and knowledge production.

Associate Professor of Health Sciences and Sport Management Janelle Joseph kicked off the event with a keynote speech on the nature and manifestations of colonialism in academia and society.

“Colonial thinking or colonial ideas are deeply engrained in our education system from preschool to post-secondary,” said Joseph, Founder and Director of the Indigeneity, Diaspora, Equity and Anti-racism in Sport (IDEAS) Research Lab.

“As we recognize the myths of capitalist progress or efforts to ‘civilize’ people, then we are already doing decolonial work because we’re shedding light on that which has been normalized as just ‘true’ or ‘fact.’”

Joseph outlined a framework of four ideas related to decolonial practices she uses in her work.

“Pluriversality” recognizes a wide variety of “Indigenous, African, Arab and Asian thinkers that can drive our knowledges” beyond the narrow, limited scope of Western thinking taught at universities, she said.

Joseph said she’s committed to the idea of “sumud,” a Palestinian concept referring to “steadfast or resolute anticolonial perseverance” that goes beyond “the singular and linear ideas that come from the West and its methodological habits.”

“Re-existencia,” a Central American idea, is the healing of humiliation, degradation, exclusion and other colonial wounds by “re-defining and re-signifying of life in conditions of dignity,” she said.

The South African concept of “ubuntu” — which means “I am because we are” — which Joseph said raises awareness of the interdependence of “all living organisms of which humans are only one part.”

The event also featured three panellists who answered a series of questions focusing on how they apply decolonial principles in their scholarship.

In their arts-based research, work and activism, Social Justice and Equity Studies master’s student Alli Rolle said it’s vital to “reimagine the tools of inquiry” that go beyond Western ways of knowing and dismantle forms of knowledge production “that give power to the white, Western scholar.”

“My research is focused on art, but more so what we are doing with our traditional practices, knowledges, oral traditions, visual traditions and theatric traditions to change not just our conditions but an understanding of ourselves,” said Rolle.

Data used to train artificial intelligence (AI) machine learning models are Western-centric, obtained from the Global North and imposed on people living in the Global South, said Blessing Ogbuokiri, Professor of Computer Science.

Ogbuokiri said that decolonizing AI requires localized data collection, the inclusion of marginalized groups in the building process and the use of open-source technology.

For PhD candidate in the Department of Child and Youth Studies Kay Nwakerendu Waboso, research based only on theories fails to capture the whole picture.

Waboso, who is also an Instructor in the Department of Sport Management, said the use of colonial and positivist frameworks doesn’t allow anecdotal stories and lived experiences to be valued.

In her work, she said decolonizing knowledge production begins with “using language as a tool to deconstruct colonization as opposed to using language to upholding it.”

The event, part of Brock’s Black History Month/African Heritage Month celebrations, was moderated by Professor of Educational Studies Dolana Mogadime and included remarks from Acting Vice-President, Research Michelle McGinn, Professor and Chair of Computer Science Betty Ombuki-Berman, HRE Anti-Racism and Inclusion Advisor Shaka Licorish, and Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in Research Advisor Syna Thakur.