Why should PhD researchers challenge colonial practices?
Doing a PhD can be a long and difficult journey: the time constraints of the thesis deadline, difficulties in obtaining research funding, pressures of having to publish peer-reviewed articles, or having to navigate university and research processes in a non-native language for non-English speakers can be stressful. Others may face challenges in accessing field sites, finding research participants, or experience tension with their supervisors that make the PhD journey even more stressful and challenging.
As fellow PhD researchers, we understand these difficulties and how some PhD researchers may lack the mental or emotional energy to engage with other, seemingly irrelevant issues. Considering the coloniality of research might seem like another thing to add to our ‘to do’ list.
Yet, for ourselves, learning about the histories and inequities of research have helped us make sense of the academic system we are navigating. We believe that understanding these issues will help to develop our thinking as critical researchers, improve our research impact, and contribute to sustainable and equitable outcomes in society. Rather than another thing to check off the list, we see this as a journey of un-learning and re-discovering possibilities.
We hope this guide will be useful in particular for those who are unfamiliar with the history of research and its ties to colonialism, and how these legacies and inequalities persist to the present. Through this guide, we hope to encourage open engagement and discussion with the difficult but important ideas of addressing power imbalances in research, so that our research can have greater and more meaningful impact on society.
PhDs produce knowledge - and this gives us power
We argue that it is necessary for all researchers to engage with understanding the coloniality of research, due to the power vested in us as knowledge producers. Research is sometimes framed as being neutral and “truth-seeking”, and researchers are often taught to be objective and impartial.
However, we are all embedded in society, and our identities (e.g. nationality, ethnicity, caste, religion, gender, sexual orientation, politics etc.) influence how we see and understand the world, as well as the access and opportunities we gain (this is known as positionality). Here’s a short animated video that explains this concept in research.
Further, as PhD students based in a UK university, a former major colonial power, we benefit from this association and should be aware of how this privilege arose.
How positionality impacts research
Our positionality can impact our research (without us even realising it!) through the questions that we see as worthy of pursuit, the methods we use, the data we collect, the knowledges we deem worthy of consideration, the way we analyse our results, and the kinds of output that we produce.
Our research may go on to influence policy, direct technological innovations and products, and shape discourses (i.e. the way knowledge, events, behaviour, and societal relationships are explained and understood, including associated assumptions. E.g. the anti-immigrant discourse as portrayed in some media outlets). Therefore, our research doesn’t just describe the world - it shapes how we and others see the world. Therein lies our power.
Engaging with these issues may be uncomfortable and unsettling, since it may raise questions of complicity and feelings of guilt. However, we hope readers will take away that our focus is on the coloniality of research processes, and not on shaming individuals.
"Decolonising", or increasing diversity?
With social movements such as “Black Lives Matter” and “Rhodes Must Fall” bringing long-standing issues of colonialism and racism to front page news, the banner of “Decolonising the Curriculum'' has become widely adopted across many universities. However, while the present lack of diversity in HEIs (in terms of ethnicity, gender, sexuality, socio-economic class etc.) is part of colonial legacies, addressing this lack is not the primary purpose of this guide.
We did not want to use the term “decolonising” or “decolonisation” in naming our guide, because “decolonising” has to be discussed and understood in context-specific means – what does colonialism mean in that particular situation, and thus, what needs to be done to move away from the way coloniality is enacted in that situation?
We felt it would be more productive to focus on providing an understanding of colonialism and coloniality in knowledge production, HEIs and academia in general, and allow scholars to consider what decolonisation might entail for their contexts and fields.
Nonetheless, we have used the term “decolonising” throughout our guide to broadly mean reckoning with the world colonialism created and with coloniality – see this section on how we understand decolonising and decolonisation in academia.
Rhodes Must Fall campaign at the University of Oxford, from article on decolonising the curriculum covered in The Guardian.
Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images