Decolonizing Universities from within? Challenges and Chances of Academic Activist Work

Universities play a central role in the legitimization, production and dissemination of knowledge. These processes are political and are involved in various forms of (re)production of social inequality. For example recent developments in higher education policy, such as the ongoing economization of universities worldwide, further reinforce intersectional inequalities and colonial continuities despite a supposed institutional commitment to social justice and diversity. (cf. Brunner 2023; Gutiérrez-Rodríguez et al. 2016; Stein & Andreotti 2016).

Decolonial and feminist social movements have been demanding and shaping a power-critical analysis and transformation of the higher education system for decades. But how is it possible to advocate for a more just transformation of society and science within an institution whose foundations, logics and practices repeatedly contradict this concern? Especially when “critical knowledge projects” (Collins 2019) like decolonial or intersectionality studies are currently being increasingly discredited and threatened by anti-woke sentiments?

In my doctoral project, I approach this paradox from the perspective of precarious early career academics at German universities who try to advocate for a Decolonization of science and higher education as “scholar activist” (Collins 2017) while "deal[ing] with the dialectics of un/doing epistemic violence" (Brunner 2023) in their academic work. More specifically, the focus of the research lies on the resistant strategies and (everyday) practices that these actors develop in the conflicting academic field of ethical contradictions, (colonial) power asymmetries and unequal working conditions. For the analysis, a qualitative intersectional approach will be applied, including problem-centered interviews and participatory workshops. The aim of the project is to collect and jointly develop limits and possibilities for concrete political interventions as well as everyday resistant thinking and action strategies within outside and against the neoliberal university.