SOAS Research Online

Abstract

The discourse of decolonisation has become increasingly salient in British and European Universities, but how decolonisation is to be understood is a question that each institution, discipline and scholar must explore from their unique location in global geography and history. At SOAS the debate has been equally diverse with emphasis being placed on decolonising the curriculum, diversifying taught syllabi and improving pedagogies to engage more interactively and substantively with minority students. The Research Students’ Association, acting through the platform of the SOAS Journal of Postgraduate Research (SJPR), has placed emphasis on decentring western epistemologies. As a previous editor-in-chief of SJPR, I will focus my presentation on epistemological decolonisation, which may be understood as a deeper reflection into the historical mechanisms of knowledge-making and its colonial and ethnocentric underpinnings. It is imperative to recognise that knowledge, as well as the standards that determine what makes valid knowledge, have been disproportionately informed by western systems of thought and ways of reflecting about the world. Promoting cross-cultural understanding and recovering global histories, which precisely falls within the remit of archaeological and culture studies, requires both reflection on epistemological hierarchies and willingness to understand the world through the belief and knowledge systems, lived experiences and aetiologies of the local insiders.