Decolonising research
IGDC’s commitment to decolonising global development research must be understood as a fundamental challenge to how we work - demanding that we question our approach to research and to problematise the assumptions and perspectives that we bring to global development.
To support the research community to rise to this challenge, IGDC develops partnerships, events, workshops and toolkits exploring how research can be decolonised in practice.
Explore our research and resources below.
Decolonising Research: Tackling obstacles and working through challenges
A new IGDC working paper examines the opportunities and challenges confronting those looking to decolonise their research practice. While an extensive body of work has already debated the nature and necessity of decolonising research, this paper focuses on three challenges decolonisation can present: to research partnerships, methods, and impact. The working paper offers a toolkit of key questions researchers can work through to identify and then overcome or manage these challenges.
IGDC-UFBA Decolonising Development Research podcast series
The IGDC has received funds from the University of York’s Enhancing Research Culture fund to develop a podcast series in partnership with UFBA on the theme of decolonizing global development research.
Why do we need to decolonise global development research?
Against Decolonisation: On Africa's Place in the Global Circuit of Ideas
Professor Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò builds on the arguments in his latest book "Against Decolonisation: Taking African Agency Seriously", which provides an intellectual and moral critique of today’s decolonisation movement. He argues that 'decolonisation' has lost its way. Originally a struggle to escape the West’s direct political and economic control, it has become a catch-all idea, suffocating African thought and denying African agency.
Uma Kothari’s Towards decoloniality and justice
IGDC Annual Lecture 2023
In conversation with Dr Linda Tuhiwai Smith
The groundbreaking book 'Decolonising Methodologies Research and Indigenous Peoples' (1998) by Dr Linda Tuhiwai Smith is not only an international bestseller, but a foundational resource for critiques of the existing relationship between imperialism, dominant approaches to scientific research and Indigenous knowledge systems.
Guide to good practice for inclusive research in global development
This guide is intended primarily as a resource to help researchers in the Global North consider how to organise and conduct research with Global South partners.
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