Knowledge production in higher education: Between Europe and the Middle East

With a selected focus on Europe and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Knowledge production in higher education presents a reflexive understanding of how Europe is taught and studied at MENA universities and how knowledge about the MENA is produced in Europe. This focus is based on the observation that higher education is rarely an apolitical space and an acknowledgement of how ‘every view is a view from somewhere'. It therefore explores the politics of institutes of higher education in view of often competing scholarly practices. Furthermore, it examines the historical evolution of French, German and Italian scholarship on the MENA;analyses the cases of Malta, Palestine and Turkey with their respective liminal characteristics in between the MENA and Europe, and how these impact on higher educational approaches to the study of the Other;considers critique as the driving force not only of the higher educational establishment but of liberal and illiberal contexts, with a specific focus on Denmark, the Netherlands and Egypt;and examines influences upon knowledge production including gender, the COVID-19 pandemic (with a focus on the UK and Syria) and think tanks. © Manchester University Press 2023.

Decolonising design practices and research in unceded Australia: reframing design-led research methods

Much of design teaching, learning and research in Australia is determined by Eurocentric traditions and the ongoing colonial project. In this context Indigenous Peoples continue to experience erasure, silencing and appropriation of practices and knowledges. The Visual Communication Design Program, situated in the School of Design at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), is committed to disrupting this trajectory. In this article we describe an immersive model that seeks to challenge the role of the design educator, creative practitioner and researcher on unceded Gadigal Lands in the city of Sydney, Australia. We reflect on the challenges of facilitating Visual Communication Design and Emergent Practices, for a third iteration as an online studio experience, during COVID-19 in the context of the climate crisis, bushfires and Black Lives Matter. This iteration is the result of four years of deep collaboration with local First Nation Elders, Indigenous scholars and practitioners. The research-focused studio for 180 final-year visual communication design students is led by Local Elders, cultural and research advisers with the support of studio leaders. The consideration of design-led research methods through a process that infuses Indigenous research principles builds on the longitudinal research into the role of the emplaced designer in Indigenous-led projects on Country. Our studio, titled `In Our Own Backyard', provides students with strength-based design capabilities and understandings of the principles of the United Nations Declaration of Indigenous Peoples Rights (UNDRIP), Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property Rights (ICIP) and the Australian Indigenous Design Charter. As a studio experience, the aim is to create conditions which spark possibilities for re-orientation towards relational and respectful negotiation of difference, and the capacity to action Indigenous self-determination in complex practitioner scenarios.

Reflections on the Conceptualisation and Practices of Community Engagement as a Core Function of Universities

The world saw the "human" side of universities during the Covid-19 pandemic as universities across the globe were at the forefront of efforts to control the spread of the Coronavirus, and to explore means of making the human population acquire immunity against the virulent disease. This article contends that, although this appeared as unusual, the universities were simply fulfilling their obligation to humanity because the raison d'etre of universities includes being of service to society. Therefore, if they are unable to prevent crises from setting in, they should at least be at the forefront of efforts to combat the crises, and mitigate their effects on people. The article seeks to set the scene for the collection of articles that follow in this special issue of the South African Journal of Higher Education (SAJHE) on the theme of community engagement as a core function for universities. It argues that universities have social responsibility, and they should therefore serve as anchors of towns and regions;as engines of development in their respective geographical areas;and as champions of social causes. It presents and discusses the concepts and practices of community engagement that are critical to understanding the arguments and counterarguments in the articles that follow. These include the relationship between community engagement, on the one hand, and transformation of higher education as well as decolonisation of knowledge and ways of knowing, on the other. The article also reflects on the state of community engagement in universities in South Africa, and explains that it is mostly regarded as a stepchild because it is not valued, funded or supported in the same way as the other two core functions of teaching and learning, and research and innovation. The article also cautions against the use of rhetoric to romanticise community engagement when the projects on the ground leave much to be desired, and with not potential to make a difference to society.

Understanding the Context of Global Health Policies: Their Post-Colonial

The systemic inadequacies of models of health systems propagated by the advocates of global health policies (GHPs) have fragmented health service systems, particularly in middle- and lower-income countries. GHPs are underpinned by economic interests and the need for control by the global elite, irrespective of people's health needs. The COVID-19 pandemic challenged the advocates of GHPs, leading to calls for a movement for "decolonisation” of global health. Much of this narrative on the "decolonisation” of GHPs critiques its northern knowledge base, and the power derived from it at individual, institutional and national levels. This, it argues, has led to an unequal exchange of knowledge, making it impossible to end decades of oppressive hegemony and to prevent inappropriate decision-making on GHPs. Despite these legitimate concerns, little in the literature on the decolonisation of GHPs extends beyond epistemological critiques. This article offers a radically different perspective. It is based on an understanding of the role of transnational capital in extracting wealth from the economies of low- and middle-income countries resulting in influencing and shaping public health policy and practice, including interactions between the environment and health. It mobilises historical evidence of distorted priorities underpinning GHPs and the damaging consequences for health services throughout the world.

Reflecting on COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among South Asian communities in the UK: A learning curve to decolonising the secondary school curriculum

COVID-19 has brought to light the systemic racism faced by ethnic minorities in the UK. During the pandemic, we saw an increase in anti-Asian hate crimes and a lack of support from the government given to both patients and healthcare workers from minority backgrounds on the front lines. This lack of support potentially contributed to the increased susceptibility of ethnic minorities to COVID-19 and also their hesitancy toward the vaccine, particularly the south Asian communities. In this paper we discuss potential reasons for COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy among south Asian groups. Additionally, we propose that introducing a decolonised curriculum in secondary school may enhance cultural awareness with historical context among the white British populations, allowing for more inclusion for south Asian communities. By exploring ways to decolonise specific subjects in the secondary curriculum, this paper aims to set out a guideline for teachers and education professionals on expanding secondary school pupils' knowledge of racial issues and equality, to start the process of educating a new generation appropriately. We propose that decolonising the secondary school curriculum is a potential long-term solution to eradicating racism and discrimination. Copyright © 2023 Hu, Nissan and Pranjol.

Colonization and decolonization of global health: which way forward?

Despite taking on several forms throughout history such as colonial medicine, tropical medicine, and international health, the field of global health continues to uphold colonialist structures. History demonstrates that acts of colonialism inevitably lead to negative health outcomes. Colonial powers promoted medical advancements when diseases affected their own people, and only did so for locals when in the colonies' best interests. Numerous medical advancements in the United States also relied on the exploitation of vulnerable populations. This history is critical in evaluating the actions of the United States as a proclaimed leader in global health. A significant barrier to progress in the field of global health is that most leaders and leading institutions are located in high-income countries, thereby defining the global standard. This standard fails to meet the needs of most of the world. In times of crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, colonial mentalities may be more evident. In fact, global health partnerships themselves are often ingrained in colonialism and may be counterproductive. Strategies for change have been called into question by the recent Black Lives Matter movement, particularly in evaluating the role that less privileged communities should have in their own fate. Globally, we can commit to evaluating our own biases and learning from one another.

A Systematic Literature Review of Infrastructure Governance: Cross-sectoral Lessons for Transformative Governance Approaches

Infrastructure governance has emerged as a subject of critical interest in the current ‘infrastructure turn' whereby fragmented governance approaches sit in tension with complex demands for infrastructure transformations within contexts of multiple intersecting crises. To understand the state of the literature and inform ongoing debates, a systematic review method is used to interrogate a large body of infrastructure governance literature across sectoral boundaries. This review identifies a range of literature gaps prevailing in the areas of infrastructure governance on unceded First Nations land, the societal end goals of infrastructure, and understandings and applications of integrated governance. © The Author(s) 2022.

Digital Design and Innovation of Objects after Covid-19

With COVID-19, while questioning the coverage areas, duties, and functionality of objects that are indispensable for our lives, we see that objects destroy the weak and the design itself eliminates the non-immune and the weak in some cases. In this process, it is of great importance to reconsider design for the reason of existence of humanity and to develop new design concepts from a holistic perspective. The decolonisation of design, social innovation, and transformations of production and consumption forms in relation to the crisis are possible with speculative design approaches. In the new world order, designing forward-looking nanotechnologies with measureless and extraordinary scenarios will be the beginning of new alternatives. Emergency situations overcome the fluid modernity in our lives and the new developing normality is possible with design projects covering emergency situations. While each crisis creates its opportunities in itself, transition design needs to be planned by adopting an interdisciplinary understanding of how to initiate and direct change in social and natural systems through design. In this study, the reconstruction of COVID-19 social distance alerts on objects in the light of science and technology will be examined.

Engaging the Social: Community Engaged Pedagogy in the Context of Decolonization and Transformation at the University of Cape Town(1)

Globally, higher education is at a crossroads on so many levels: funding, course development, who our students are, what knowledge is relevant for the world of work and beyond, what kinds of students do we want to graduate, and who are we as educators. All these questions (and more) have been around for some time;the current COVID-19 context however brings them even more sharply to the fore. This paper responds to the prompt about how we train professionals for the future so that they do not participate in systems of oppression and inequality. It was written in 2017 in response to a conference on social and epistemic justice in the wake of the 2015 student protest movements and was written collaboratively by an intergenerational group of educators working on a course in the Engineering and Built Environment (EBE) Faculty at the University of Cape Town, South Africa3. All of us have a strong commitment to social justice, and to providing engineering students with an opportunity to think about their professional identity through the lens of community engagement. While written before the onset of COVID-19, we believe that the arguments we make are pertinent to the current context. Drawing on the Honors' thesis of one member of our group4, we sought to reflect on and analyze our work in this context. In particular, the principles of multi-centricity, indigeneity and reflexivity (Dei, 2014) proved useful in making sense of our practice and our work together.

Redefining the role of urban studies Early Career Academics in the post-COVID-19 university

We are an international collective of Early Career Academics (ECAs) who met throughout 2020 to explore the implications of COVID-19 on precarious academics. With this intervention, our aims are to voice commonly shared experiences and concerns and to reflect on the extent to which the pandemic offers opportunities to redefine Higher Education and research institutions, in a context of ongoing precarity and funding cuts. Specifically, we explore avenues to build solidarity across institutions and geographies, to ensure that the conduct of urban research, and support offered to ECAs, allows for more inclusivity, diversity, security and equitability. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of City is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Epistemological freedom: activating co-learning and co-production to decolonise knowledge production

Purpose>The purpose of the paper is to challenge and address the limitations of the traditional system of knowledge production that is embedded in disaster and climate change research studies, and research studies in general. It argues that knowledge production in research processes conforms to colonialist thinking or west-inspired approaches. Such a system often results in the omission of crucial information due to a lack of participation, inclusion and diversity in knowledge production.Design/methodology/approach>The paper proposes practices and recommendations to decolonise knowledge production in disaster and climate change research studies, and research studies in general. It provides a brief literature review on the concepts of decolonisation of knowledge and epistemological freedom, and its origins;assesses the need for knowledge decolonisation, emphasising on the integration of local knowledge from grassroots women-led initiatives in instances where disasters and crises are being investigated in vulnerable communities, especially in the Global South;and finally the paper proposes to decolonise knowledge production through activating co-learning and co-production. The practices have been developed from the work of relevant authors in the field and case studies.Findings>Through a brief literature review on previous discourses on the topic of knowledge decolonisation and analysis of recent case studies on disaster and crisis management and community resilience, the paper finds that there exists a lack of pluralism and inclusion in epistemology which limits the pursuit to obtain the whole truth in the production of knowledge in research studies.Originality/value>This paper adds to the discussion of decolonisation of knowledge in the field of disaster and climate change research studies, and research processes in general. It provides in-depth analyses of recent case studies of emerging community resilience and local practices that were crucial in the face of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis.

Learning how to be a scyborg: how prefigurative organisations can promote capacity to decolonialise organisations

How can people acquire the capacity and community to potentially move institutions, such that they are change-promoting organisations? La paperson’s (2017) scyborg describes how within organisations, members can repurpose colonial practices for decolonised, transformative goals. My research suggests that prefigurative organisations can offer spill-over effects by strengthening the experiential organising repertoire and ties of scyborgs across organisations. Using my own experiences, I examine how my participant observations at a democratic independent school and its growing global network have informed my efforts to infuse conventional organisations, including my public university, with liberatory practices. Conventional organisations blur boundaries and thereby promote overwork, obscure work often performed by minoritised members and encourage networking for transactional purposes. In contrast, scyborgs’ transformative practices: (a) make invisible and usually devalued and extracted work visible;(b) encourage and support voice and member-led efforts;and (c) cultivate relations as avenues for mutual growth.

Decolonising medical causality in the COVID-19 pandemic.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has irrevocably changed every aspect of social, medical and economic life globally. Although our traditional Western consideration of the underlying causes have led to massive strides in prevention and control of spread, a wider more inclusive approach, including principles of African and non-Western causality may facilitate our ability to prevent future outbreaks. Decolonising our traditional thoughts on medical causality may compliment the practice of medicine and enrich our understanding of health.

Infrastructure Governance in Times of Crises: A Research Agenda for Australian Cities

Planning should deliver urban infrastructures that nurture places and people. However, the misalignment between strategic plans and delivered projects reveals critical governance gaps, with little clarity surrounding for whom and what ends infrastructures serve. This positioning piece proposes an infrastructure governance research agenda focused on the integration of planning, funding, and social legitimacy of projects, and the reality of multiple ongoing crises. Most importantly, the proposed research agenda calls for a First Nation voice at the heart of infrastructure decision-making as part of the planning profession's contribution to the Treaty process that Australia desperately needs to move forward.

Utilizing Computational Thinking in Programming to Reduce Academic Dishonesty and Promote Decolonisation

Higher education in South Africa has been in the spotlight in the past few years with calls for decolonisation of the curriculum and other matters. We teach a first-year programming module that is challenging to decolonise since the origin of programming languages is inherently Western. Students often do not resonate with some examples used, let alone concepts of programming in general. During COVID-19, emergency remote teaching and learning were adopted and we had to be mindful of various limitations, such as data usage and bandwidth. We experienced difficulty expanding each student's frame of reference. Furthermore, increased academic dishonesty occurrences were encountered. This paper focuses on contextualising the module content, promoting computational thinking, and reducing academic dishonesty. This was achieved in an action research cycle through enriching our assessment practices by creating a weekly assignment where the principles of computational thinking were applied within a problem-solving learning environment. It was found that most students had positive perceptions about the intervention and their views and experiences are reported. © 2022, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

"Working from home is one major disaster": An analysis of student feedback at a South African university during the Covid-19 lockdown.

The Covid-19 global pandemic has resulted in many countries moving teaching and learning online. South Africa is a country with major inequalities in terms of access to electricity, internet and information technologies, which have created considerable problems for online learning at institutions of higher learning in the country. In this paper, we analyse student feedback from two large undergraduate English courses at a school of Education of a major South African university. We specifically focus on two qualitative questions which asked students about the challenges they faced and the skills they developed in online learning. Results are considered through the lens of critical digital pedagogies and decolonisation. Our findings indicate that a lack of access and resources, disruptive home environments and unfamiliarity with online learning methods were significant obstacles for students. In addition, many students indicated developing computer skills and learning how to use online resources during the courses. The study suggests that online teaching and learning in South Africa and similar contexts exacerbates inequalities, and must be accompanied by rigorous support structures for students who are vulnerable in these contexts.

Decolonising and Africanising the Spanish studies curriculum under emergency online teaching: introducing Equatorial Guinean literature in South African higher education

This is a reflective piece that explores the process of creating and implementing a new course at the University of the Witwatersrand on the literature of Equatorial Guinea under emergency online teaching that took place in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite the difficult moment and the challenges experienced, the course became an extraordinary opportunity for the decolonisation and Africanisation of the Spanish Studies curriculum. The fact that this first course ever on Afro-Hispanic literature at a South African university took place in an online format allowed us to draw on certain digital teaching and learning strategies and approaches that enormously enriched the course - such as webinars with authors. The online situation also contributed to the decolonisation of the classroom, opening up more inclusive processes that allowed for the co-creation of knowledge with students. This article is an auto-ethnography of the course, drawing on both the lecturer and the student perspective. It reflects on the process of teaching and learning about literature from Equatorial Guinea during emergency online teaching of 2020 and how this opened up opportunities for the decolonisation and Africanisation of the Spanish Studies curriculum in South Africa higher education.

Epistemological freedom: activating co-learning and co-production to decolonise knowledge production

Purpose The purpose of the paper is to challenge and address the limitations of the traditional system of knowledge production that is embedded in disaster and climate change research studies, and research studies in general. It argues that knowledge production in research processes conforms to colonialist thinking or west-inspired approaches. Such a system often results in the omission of crucial information due to a lack of participation, inclusion and diversity in knowledge production. Design/methodology/approach The paper proposes practices and recommendations to decolonise knowledge production in disaster and climate change research studies, and research studies in general. It provides a brief literature review on the concepts of decolonisation of knowledge and epistemological freedom, and its origins;assesses the need for knowledge decolonisation, emphasising on the integration of local knowledge from grassroots women-led initiatives in instances where disasters and crises are being investigated in vulnerable communities, especially in the Global South;and finally the paper proposes to decolonise knowledge production through activating co-learning and co-production. The practices have been developed from the work of relevant authors in the field and case studies. Findings Through a brief literature review on previous discourses on the topic of knowledge decolonisation and analysis of recent case studies on disaster and crisis management and community resilience, the paper finds that there exists a lack of pluralism and inclusion in epistemology which limits the pursuit to obtain the whole truth in the production of knowledge in research studies. Originality/value This paper adds to the discussion of decolonisation of knowledge in the field of disaster and climate change research studies, and research processes in general. It provides in-depth analyses of recent case studies of emerging community resilience and local practices that were crucial in the face of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis.

Confronting the gated community: Towards a decolonial critique of violence beyond the paradigm of war

This article investigates the works of Dussel, Maldonado-Torres, and Mbembe as representatives of a tendency in the field of decolonial thought to assume the templates of warfare and the camp as the archetypal registers of violence in the contemporary world. Identifying this focus as the remnant of a Eurocentric vocabulary (the paradigm of war), the article proposes a shift from the language of warfare predominant in the field to a language of welfare. The article turns to the gated community (GC), instead of the camp, and the imperatives of (re)creation, instead of the logics of elimination, as new templates with which to make sense of modern/colonial violence. Moving beyond militaristic imagery, the analysis shows a form of violence that emerges as a response to the endless search for a life of convenience inside the walls of the GC. To this end, the article advances the concept of the dialect of disarrangement, the enforced but uneasy encounter between two subjectivities that inhabit the GC: the patrons (the homeowners who consume the easy life) and servants (the racialised service staff). In the GC, violence emerges in attempts to respond to this (in)convenient encounter via misrepresentations of both patrons and servants as out of their place.