News
Call for Papers
12.10.2021
The Ali Mazrui Centre for Higher Education Studies (AMCHES), University of Johannesburg, in collaboration with the University of Bayreuth, Germany, is organising an international conference on “The Transdisciplinary Search for Innovative Approaches in Decolonisation and the Integration and Dialogue among Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Epistemologies” (20-23 February 2022).
Discourses of indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) and their place in higher education are a subject of vital interest in both social movements and scholarly critique. Often, however, they feature at the university as a once-off project or declarative window dressing. This workshop provides a platform to collaboratively reflect on sustainable conceptual outlooks and applied best-practice examples of IKS and decolonisation at the university and beyond, taking into account practical insights from different institutions and different disciplines. We contend that a renewed structural focus on IKS beyond tokenistic lip service is needed for revealing its proven resilience strategies and sustainable realisations in various academic disciplines. The fundamental and innovative process of redefining educational standards to ensure that teaching and learning occur within appropriate African contexts of relevance is a long-term objective. With this workshop, we aim to take stock mid-way:
How we can set a sustainable cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary dialogue among different epistemic traditions and lastingly accommodate indigenous knowledge systems in higher education?
The workshop will bring together early career and established scholars from Europe and Africa and will offer a gateway for further and in-depth academic research reflecting on innovative approaches and perspectives to the discussion of indigenous knowledges and cross-cultural dialogue between different epistemologies within the framework of hybridity and IKS in higher education.
We are looking for papers on themes related to:
- IKS in higher education
- Perspectives on current decolonization initiatives
- Innovative curriculum reform initiatives towards inclusive education
- Theory development and epistemologies from the Global South
- Transdisciplinary approaches towards learning and research
- Best-practice examples of sustainable integration of IKS at the university• Cross-cultural perspectives on epistemologies
The workshop will be organised in Johannesburg, South Africa, in collaboration with the Ali Mazrui Centre for Higher Education Studies (AMCHES), University of Johannesburg.
The conference is funded by the VolkswagenStiftung/Volkswagen Foundation.
If you want to participate in the workshop and the related collaborative publication, please send an abstract of about 200-300 words before 15 November 2021 and a full paper draft before 15 January 2022 to emnetw@uj.ac.za and irina.turner@uni-bayreuth.de
