What kind of qualitative research does the world need right now? Reflections on the possibilities of Decolonial Feminist Research for advancing global justice
Type:
Plenary Conference
Category:
Online
Place:
Online 1
Date and time:
13:15 to 14:15 on 02/11/2025
Ongoing violence, injustice and global inequities demand a rethink on knowledge production and its implications. There are several urgent global injustices in the world right now that include increasing forms of discrimination, violence and hatred; ongoing militarised conflicts and human rights violations – including those based on gender, ethnicity and nationality; widening economic inequalities; and the detrimental effects of climate change that also disproportionately affect the most vulnerable causing displacement and suffering which includes food insecurity. In this pressing context we require research that does things differently. We need approaches to knowledge production that can offer us the tools to work against the status quo and that offers visibility (and justice) to the struggles of the most marginalised.
In this talk I attend to the growing body of research that calls itself decolonial and feminist, work that calls attention to the questions of injustice that are simultaneously historical and ongoing. I articulate decolonial feminist principles of collaboration and community participation; action-orientation; renewed attention to ethics; centering voice, positionality and self-determination; addressing dignity and healing; calling attention to historical and ongoing forms of power and injustice; and centering creativity and challenging dominant western scientific paradigms. In doing so, I outline the implications of decolonial feminist theorising for the practice of qualitative research – offering a model of the kind of qualitative research that we need in the world right now – towards the radical remaking of scholarship and knowledge production that advances global and social justice.