Call for Papers: Decolonising Knowledge around Gender and Sexuality

In collaboration with University College London and Kohl: a Journal for Body and Gender Research, CTDC is delighted to publish its call for papers for its third annual conference, under the title Decolonising Knowledge around Gender and Sexuality. The conference will aim to address issues and challenges related to producing knowledge around gender and sexuality transnationally, with a focus on the Global South, through a decolonial lens. Through acknowledging that discourse-making is a political endeavour, we aim to question the epistemological and ontological grounding of research as praxis, not as mere pursuit of knowledge, learning, and education. For the full call for papers click here.

We are seeking papers by academics, grassroots activists, organisations and practitioners from the Global South, that speak to one or more of the following thematic areas within the fields of gender and sexuality studies:

• Positionality and Intersectionality: How do our identities, multiple belongings and experiences influence our choice of research, its conduct and practice? How does our positionality influence the type of knowledge we produce around gender and sexuality? How can we produce knowledge around gender and sexuality that is genuinely reflexive, intersectional and decolonial
• Decolonising Methods and Methodologies: How can we apply decoloniality to our choice of methods and methodologies? How can we decolonise traditional research methods, such as interviews, surveys and ethnographic research? How can we research and produce knowledge around gender and sexuality without using western frameworks for knowledge production? How can we turn around the ‘researcher versus researched’ dichotomy in our research practice?
• Uses and Abuses of Indigenous Knowledge: How is indigenous knowledge being used within academic institutions? How is indigenous knowledge being utilised outside academic institutions? Why is there a need in the first place to produce indigenous knowledge and who does it inform?
• Decolonising language and terminologies: How can we use ‘native’ language as a tool to decolonise knowledge produced around gender and sexuality? How do Universalist gender and sexual rights discourses, languages and terminologies contribute to cultural imperialism and structural violence in the Global South? What is the role of language and terminologies in influencing the production of localised knowledges in the Global South?
• Decolonising Academic Institutions: How do academic institutions in the Global North contribute to cultural imperialism? How is knowledge produced in the West about gender and sexuality creating semi-realities and discourses around the Global South? How are academic institutions in the West complicit in creating hegemonies and hierarchies around ‘valuable’ knowledge?
• Decolonial Research Ethics: How can we produce research and knowledge around gender and sexuality in the Global South that is ethical? To whose benefit are we producing knowledge around gender and sexuality in the Global South? Are we imposing terminologies and categories through research? Are we co-producing knowledge around gender and sexuality in the Global South? And how can we co-produce knowledge around gender and sexuality with grassroots and local voices?

Submission

We invite contributors, including activists, academics and practitioners, to submit abstracts of no more than 350 words by July 30, 2018. Please send your abstract and your short biography to info@ctdc.org. When submitting your abstract please point to which of the abovementioned themes your paper falls. We accept submissions in Arabic, English and French. Following the conference, selected papers from the conference will be featured in a special issue in Kohl: a Journal for Body and Gender Research. Subject to funding availability, we may be able to fund some travel costs, please email for more information.