Paper short abstract

Decolonial praxis grounded in Indigenous Knowledge Systems offers sustainable pathways for tropical Africa amid global uncertainty. Centering African agency, epistemic justice, and participatory governance, the study shows how indigenous practices reshape the society for sustainable development.

Paper long abstract

In an era of overlapping climate, economic, and governance uncertainties, dominant development paradigms continue to marginalize Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) through technocratic, externally driven interventions. This paper critically examines decolonial praxis grounded in IKS as a pathway toward sustainable development in tropical Africa, aligning with calls to reimagine development through power, agency, and futures-oriented thinking. Drawing on African decolonial theory, political ecology, and post-development scholarship, the study interrogates how epistemic hierarchies reproduce development inequalities while constraining locally rooted responses to uncertainty.

Methodologically, the paper adopts a qualitative, interpretive approach, combining critical discourse analysis of development policies with secondary case-based analysis drawn from agrarian, ecological, and resource-governance contexts across tropical Africa. This approach enables an examination of how indigenous practices such as communal land stewardship, agroecological farming, and customary water governance function as adaptive, future-facing systems rather than residual traditions.

The findings demonstrate that IKS-based practices enhance resilience, environmental sustainability, and social cohesion, yet remain systematically excluded from formal policy frameworks. By conceptualizing decoloniality as praxis, the paper highlights how local actors actively negotiate knowledge, power, and modernity in pursuit of plural developmental futures. The analysis advances concrete policy implications, arguing for the institutional recognition of IKS, participatory governance mechanisms, and epistemic inclusion in sustainability planning. The paper concludes that reimagining development in tropical Africa requires redistributing decision-making power and embedding indigenous agency at the center of sustainable futures-making, positioning the region as a generator of globally relevant development alternatives.

Paper short abstract

This paper challenges conventional participatory models by applying "design thinking" as a decolonial research method, which helps to reposition communities as co-designers who can define problems, question power, and co-create solutions for sustainable, community-owned change.

Paper long abstract

Conventional participatory approaches often involve communities only as informants rather than co-designer of the solution. Thus, it reinforces the status quo- “expert- subject” hierarchy. As a result, many well- intended interventions miss the mark and fails to build ownership or achieve sustainable impact within the community. This topic intends to challenge that model- by applying design thinking as a decolonial research method. Inspired by its transformative use in corporate spaces like Airbnb, Nike, and Netflix, which has helped in enhancing customer experience, design thinking enables communities to define their problem, question assumptions and co-create solutions. Grounded in real-world social practices, it reflects upon how this can be applied in research by shifting the role from researcher as an authority to design or implement to a role of facilitator- dismantling hierarchy and fostering authentic community ownership. It’s just not about solving the wicked problem, it about who has the power to define the problem at the first place.

Keywords: participatory research, community-led innovation, power dynamics, co-creation, transformational practices, decolonizing research methods, design thinking

Paper short abstract

This paper re-thinks and re-examimes the idea of ‘development’ in India's Northeastern region against the backdrop of expanding natural resource extraction projects and its associated socio-ecological & Indigenous epistemological consequences.

Paper long abstract

India’s North-East region, a troubled frontier periphery and sandwiched between ‘Southeast Asian country’ and so-called ‘mainstream India,’ is oft-times peripheralized/marginalized in dominant narratives of Asian modernity and development. While the region is geographically located on the edge of Asia, its unique socio-political context, developmental challenges and the ongoing resource extraction projects challenges conventional notion of development. Against this background, this paper re-thinks the idea of ‘development’ in Northeast India against the backdrop of expanding natural resource extraction projects and its associated socio-ecological consequences. Drawing on the region’s experiences with hydrocarbon extraction, mining, larger dams, and forest-based interventions, the study argues that development in Northeast India has largely been pursued through externally imposed, resource-centric models that prioritize national growth and revenue over local livelihoods, ecological sustainability and Indigenous rights. Such extractive development has intensified land alienation, environmental degradation, and the erosion of customary institutions, particularly among Indigenous tribal communities whose lives are deeply intertwined with land, forests and water. By engaging with political ecology and decolonial perspectives, the paper foregrounds community narratives, resource politics & governance in Sixth schedule areas and everyday forms of resistance to show how extractivism is contested. The paper contends that re-thinking development in the light of natural resource extraction and when discussing about the Indigenous future under extractivism must go beyond extractivist logics towards ‘pluriverse’ and locally (territorially) grounded pathways that recognized Indigenous worldviews(epistemology and ontology) & sovereignty, ecological limits, more-than human histories and the lived realities of Northeast India.

Paper short abstract

This paper shows how two theater experiments worked to unsettle development’s didactic impulse. Whereas development often assumes an “expert” who must teach the “underdeveloped,” the Marotholi Traveling Theatre and Kamĩrĩĩthũ Cultural Centre mobilized alternative voices and local epistemologies.

Paper long abstract

In the early 2000s, the World Bank published its three-volume Voices of the Poor project, claiming to represent the “voices” of approximately 60,000 “poor people.” But the Bank was hardly alone in its search to incorporate new “voices” into the developmental process. For decolonial alternatives, this paper examines two community theater experiments: the Marotholi Traveling Theatre in Lesotho, and the Kamĩrĩĩthũ Community Education and Cultural Centre in Kenya. Established in 1982 by the National University of Lesotho’s English Department and Institute of Extra Mural Studies, the Marotholi Traveling Theatre used theater to “initiate and support community development and self-help programmes” (Zakes Mda, When People Play People, 65). The Kamĩrĩĩthũ project also used theater to engage rural communities. Involved in both projects were two prominent writer-activists: Zakes Mda and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o.

This paper surfaces the strategies and practices that both movements used to unsettle development’s didactic impulse. Whereas development often assumes an “expert” figure who must teach the “underdeveloped,” the Marotholi and Kamĩrĩĩthũ experiments reimagined rural communities as producers of knowledge and co-creators of the developmental process. Rather than extract the “voices” of “the poor,” as does the World Bank, the Marotholi and Kamĩrĩĩthũ projects pursued participatory and dialogic methods. And yet, rather than romanticize these projects, this paper seeks middle ground. Mapping tensions between the communities of participants and the “writer-activist,” this paper shows how these projects mobilized alternative voices and local epistemologies while also imposing certain limits around who is granted the authority to define and represent development.

Paper short abstract

This research compares UK and Irish media coverage of Gaza since 2023 through a development lens, finding UK reporting is more self-referential and state-focused, while Irish media foregrounds humanitarian impact, and argues that this is shaped by differing colonial histories and political contexts.

Paper long abstract

This research compares how UK and Irish (Republic of Ireland) mainstream media—primarily online newspapers and major state-governed media platforms such as the BBC and RTÉ—have framed Gaza through a development lens since October 2023. Focusing on humanitarian aid, civilian protection, reconstruction, and international responsibility, the study analyses dominant patterns across public broadcasters and leading national outlets rather than isolated headlines. It highlights differences in narrative priorities, sourcing practices, and the relationship between media framing and national political context, situating these contrasts within the distinct colonial histories of Britain and Ireland. Britain’s legacy as a major colonial power, and Ireland’s history as a country colonised by Britain with no comparable identity as a coloniser, continue to shape public attitudes and media sensibilities in both contexts.

A notable feature of UK coverage is its strongly self-referential character. Debates over language choices (such as “war” versus “conflict”), sourcing, and journalistic impartiality—particularly in relation to the BBC—have become prominent media stories in their own right. This politicises humanitarian reporting, at times shifting attention away from lived conditions in Gaza toward discussions of media regulation, balance, and credibility.

Analysis suggests that while development actors such as UN agencies and NGOs appear regularly in UK media, they are frequently counterbalanced by official state voices, reinforcing a framing of aid as operational, conditional, and politically constrained. In contrast, Irish media more consistently foregrounds humanitarian impact, emphasising civilian casualties, health system collapse, displacement, famine risk, and barriers to aid delivery.

Paper short abstract

This paper examines how unconscious cognitive biases shape development cooperation practice and policy, operating as hidden micro-level mechanisms through which dominant forms of knowledge production and power asymmetries are reproduced in the Global North’s engagement with the Global South.

Paper long abstract

Critical development and postdevelopment scholarship has long demonstrated that international development cooperation is not a neutral endeavour, but one deeply embedded in historical power relations, colonial legacies, and Eurocentric modes of knowledge production. Despite increasing rhetorical commitments to partnership, participation, and decolonisation, development practices continue to reproduce asymmetrical relations between the Global North and the Global South.

While much of the literature has focused on discourses, institutions, and political economy, considerably less attention has been paid to the cognitive mechanisms through which these asymmetries are reproduced in everyday development practice. In particular, the role of unconscious cognitive biases - implicit assumptions, perceptions, and evaluative frameworks that operate below the level of conscious reflection - remains underexplored in postdevelopment and postcolonial analyses.

This paper seeks to bridge this gap by integrating insights from postdevelopment theory, postcolonial political thought, and cognitive bias research, in order to analyse how unconscious biases shape development cooperation practices and sustain colonial patterns of thought and action. It stipulates that cognitive biases function as micro-level mechanisms through which macro-level postcolonial power asymmetries are continually reinforced in everyday development practice.

The author aims to contribute to the decolonial advancement of development theory and practice by foregrounding the psychological and discursive dimensions of unequal power relations in development cooperation. In doing so, she bridges a gap between postcolonial critique, institutional analysis, and cognitive bias research, with implications for teaching, organisational development, and policy design in international development cooperation.

Paper short abstract

Drawing on Gramsci, Quijano, and Ambedkar, this paper frames Dalit struggles as counter-hegemonic and decolonial praxis, showing how movements like the Dalit Panthers and Bhim Army contest caste hegemony, reshape epistemologies, and redefine development, democracy, and social justice from below.

Paper long abstract

Building on Antonio Gramsci’s (1971) theorization of hegemony and counter-hegemony, this paper conceptualizes decoloniality as a political and epistemic struggle against historically entrenched relations of domination. Gramsci’s insight that power is sustained not only through coercion but also through consent produced via institutions, culture, and knowledge offers a lens to examine how colonial and postcolonial orders reproduce inequality in the Global South. Read alongside Aníbal Quijano’s (2000; 2014) formulation of the coloniality of power and B. R. Ambedkar’s (1936) radical critique of caste as a system of graded inequality, this framework illuminates how caste hierarchies are normalized through hegemonic projects.

In the Indian context, overlapping regimes of domination - rooted both in colonial modernity and pre-existing social hierarchies - have systematically denied Dalits recognition as historical, political, and epistemic subjects. Colonial and postcolonial state formations, nationalist imaginaries, and dominant knowledge systems have marginalized Dalit theory and experiences, rendering caste oppression either invisible or culturally residual. This hegemonic configuration has not only justified material dispossession and social exclusion but has also constrained the very terms through which development, emancipation, and social justice are articulated.

Against this backdrop, the paper foregrounds Dalit democratic struggles as counter-hegemonic and decolonial practices, highlighting movements such as the Dalit Panthers as well as contemporary initiatives like the Bhim Army. These movements contest Brahminical hegemony, reclaim dignity and political agency, and generate alternative epistemologies - notably through Dalit Studies and activism - as interventions that actively reshape development, democracy, and social justice from below.

Paper short abstract

In Oaxaca’s Mixteca region, communities define restoration success through arraigo -a deep-rooted connection to land, water, and cultural belonging- which clashes with institutional metrics like hectares reforested. Our study exposes the power dynamics behind who defines “development” success.

Paper long abstract

In Oaxaca’s Mixteca Alta region of southern Mexico, an Indigenous territory scarred by centuries of deforestation and erosion, our research reveals a clear divide in how “successful” restoration is understood. Local Mixtec communities frame success through arraigo: a deep-rooted sense of place encompassing intergenerational knowledge, water security, and cultural belonging. This biocultural vision of restoration prioritises reviving communal lands and livelihoods, aiming to strengthen community autonomy and identity for future generations. By contrast, government and NGO programmes impose narrow ecological metrics (e.g. hectares reforested, tree survival rates) as the primary benchmarks of success amid ambitious reforestation efforts.

Using a political ecology lens, we show how these contrasting visions reflect broader power asymmetries and knowledge hierarchies in development. Institutional actors often “speak for” the community through technocratic indicators, marginalising Indigenous epistemologies and governance systems. Thus, dominant development discourse privileges numeric targets and external “expert” knowledge, while local well-being outcomes and voices remain undervalued.

Our study argues that centring Indigenous voices and knowledge in defining restoration and development is a crucial act of decolonising practice. It highlights how community-led visions of the future, grounded in arraigo and guided by Indigenous governance, challenge dominant development and restoration paradigms fixated on quantitative outcomes. By illuminating who gets to define success and why it matters, the paper calls for reimagining development futures that prioritise local agency, cultural values, and ecological justice over top-down metrics.

Paper short abstract

Indigenous epistemologies from the Global South challenge dominant development models and offer transformative, community-rooted approaches. This paper shows how local knowledge reshapes sustainability, resilience, and power in development, promoting co-created and equitable futures.

Paper long abstract

For decades, development knowledge has been produced, validated, and circulated through frameworks shaped largely in the Global North, often rendering the epistemologies of the Global South as secondary, informal, or obsolete. Yet indigenous knowledge systems, rooted in lived experience, ecological intimacy, communal governance, and intergenerational memory offer profound insights into resilience, sustainability, and social organisation. This paper examines how these epistemologies not only challenge dominant development paradigms but also offer transformative possibilities for reordering what counts as legitimate knowledge in development practice.

Drawing on examples from African contexts, the paper interrogates how indigenous epistemologies have historically been marginalised through colonial, extractive, and technocratic development approaches. It highlights the tensions between universalist models and localised understandings of well-being, social equity, and environmental stewardship.

By foregrounding Global South perspectives, the paper illustrates how community archives, oral traditions, indigenous governance systems, and local ecological knowledge are actively reshaping contemporary development thinking. It explores cases where these epistemologies have informed climate resilience strategies, conflict resolution models, sustainable agriculture, and community-driven planning.

Ultimately, the paper argues that embracing indigenous epistemologies is not simply a call for cultural recognition but a crucial step toward rebalancing global power relations in knowledge production. Reordering development knowledge requires a shift from extractive engagement to co-creation, one that positions Global South voices as central architects of development futures in an increasingly uncertain world.

Paper short abstract

Traditional poverty indicators are not used to assess caste-based structural exclusion. We apply the Ambedkarite philosophy to decolonize development, which states that development has to be gauged by annihilation of caste and realisation of dignity rather than material deprivation.

Paper long abstract

Global Reimagination of Development requires a radical review of the methods of measuring human progress. This paper deals with the deep inefficiency of traditional measures of poverty, including the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), which are systematically unable to explain the structural violence of caste. These measures are mainly used to measure shortages of materials, with the final result being unaware of the long-term processes and dynamics of power that reproduce graded inequality- this is a central idea in the works of Ambedkar.

We build heavily on the socio-economic philosophy of B. R. Ambedkar to shift the developmental agenda to poverty reduction to the task of attaining dignity and non-discrimination. We argue that emancipatory future needs to be conceptually redefined as the destruction of caste. The paper questions the prevailing economic gaze by stating that lack of social dignity and existence of systematic exclusion are the distinguishing characteristics of structural poverty in India using critical analysis. It is only through the measurement of these factors that real agency can be opened up and the policy directed toward resilient and just futures in an ever uncertain world.

Keywords: Ambedkarite, Graded Inequality, Poverty Metrics, Dignity, Decolonizing Development

Paper short abstract

This paper offers a critical reflection on how cultural forms inform new forms of political and social agency emerging across Ghana. It argues that reimagining development requires decentering technocracy and foregrounding culture as a site of power, creativity, resistance, and future-making.

Paper long abstract

Culture, understood as the dynamic system of meanings, identities, practices, and values that shape everyday life, plays a central role in how development is imagined, contested, and enacted in Ghana. Through an interpretivist philosophical orientation, this paper offers a critical reflection on how cultural forms such as artistic expressions inform new forms of political and social agency emerging across Ghana. This is situated within broader struggles and systemic global challenges such as climate vulnerability and the crisis of neoliberal development models. Drawing on neo-colonial theory, the paper argues that reimagining development requires decentering technocracy and foregrounding culture as a site of power, creativity, resistance, and future-making. Culture influences how people interpret development interventions, legitimize authority, mobilize collective action, and envision possible futures. It shapes how communities negotiate global norms, resist extractive practices, and articulate context-specific approaches to well-being and self-determination. This study positions culture as both a diagnostic and generative tool for imagining resilient and community-driven development in Ghana.

Paper short abstract

Adivasi communities in Kokrajhar use fluid and strategically fragmented identities to contest state authority and rethink development. This paper shows how their epistemologies unsettle dominant frameworks, offering situated, community-rooted alternatives for redefining what development can mean.

Paper long abstract

Drawing on long-form interviews conducted across Kokrajhar, a district within the Bodoland Territorial Council, one of the three autonomous councils in Assam, India, in 2024-2025, this paper examines how Adivasi communities produce, circulate and defend knowledge in ways that fundamentally challenge dominant understandings of ‘development’. In a region shaped by ethnic violence, contested indigeneity and shifting land regimes, Adivasi political actors engage in what I term fragmented indigeneity, the strategic movement between a broad collective identity (Adivasi) and specific community identities such as Santhal, Oraon, Munda and Kharia. Rather than signaling internal divisions, this fluidity operates as an epistemic strategy for navigating state classifications, resisting caste assimilation. The paper links this strategy to what I describe as development sovereignties, the vernacular modes through which Adivasi communities', assert their authority over land, forests and historical presence. These emerge from collective archives of displacement and violence, particularly the major cycles between the period from 1980 to 2014, as well as from daily encounters with intersecting land and forest bureaucracies. These epistemologies disrupt development models that assume stable administrative categories, fixed ethnic identities.

By situating Kokrajhar within broader Global South politics, where marginalised groups negotiate incomplete sovereignties, contradictory land laws, and violent development interventions, the paper shows how Adivasi knowledge unsettles Global North frameworks that privilege stability, singular identities. It argues that reclaiming indigenous epistemologies is not simple cultural recovery but a decolonial act that redefines who can speak, who is heard, and who has the authority to imagine development futures.