The SDGs represent -when seen as an integrated whole – a basic critique of our present development. These goals combine as a strategy for change where social and ecological consideration guides economic and technological actions. This also demands new knowledge and new ways of combing established disciplines (cross- and multi-disciplinary knowledge). And in the same process, knowledge needs to be de-colonized.
The SDGs also expect universities and science to become stronger actors in society and to link better with a multitude of cultures and their different ways of knowing – thus bringing forth knowledge now sidelined and suppressed (see UNESCO 2022 report
Knowledge-driven actions: transforming higher education for global sustainability).
As the UNESCO report shows, and which will be the focus of our discussion, hegemonic ways of producing /creating knowledge, organizing disciplines and promoting university base knowledge in society still has a colonial character.
Seen from the South, this way of producing knowledge both repress ways of knowing and promote the established development model to which most of the global threats are linked.
Based on our ongoing research on “Decolonizing epistemology in society and the world”, we hope to gather academics concerned with the SDGs from all continents to discuss the following question: How can a “decolonizing of knowledge” go together with and strengthen the development of knowledge needed in support of the transformations the SDGs asks for and suggests?
The workshop will have presentations by the following senior researchers:
- Grace-Edward Galabuzi from Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR), Makerere University, Uganda
- Professor Jose Frantz, Vice-Rector for Research and Innovations at The University of The Western Cape (UWC), Cape Town, South Africa
- Professor Lise Rakner, University of Bergen, Norway
- Prof Emeritus Tor Halvorsen, University of Bergen, will also chair the workshop, giving room for extensive interventions from participants worldwide.
We hope to expand our network on studies of disciplines and universities, focusing on the link between decolonization of knowledge and the SDGs. If the SDGs have the stamp of Western knowledge hegemony, they are still crucial for our discussion on how to meet global challenges and how to shape future goals based on as broad a knowledge platform as possible. We also hope to contribute to a network of academics producing relevant ideas for the interpretations of SDGs of today and their revision in a few years.
