Paper short abstract:

This presentation considers possibilities for decoloniality and inclusion in academic spaces drawing on experience in the Pacific as a non-Indigenous researcher engaging with Māori Studies and a Global North academic coordinating Gender Studies at the University of the South Pacific.

Paper long abstract:

Over ten years ago, as a non-Indigenous European early anthropologist conducting fieldwork in Māori contexts, I started to familiarise with their academic settings and engage with Māori scholars and students. In a social space marked by Māori practices and revolving around the marae (gathering place), I was introduced to Indigenous research methodologies and larger aspirations and processes to decolonize knowledge and academic institutions. Later, as an academic coordinating a gender studies programme in the South Pacific, I have strived for pedagogical practices that value students’ cultures, languages, relations, lived experiences, and their pre-existent knowledge of the region’s realities, to produce ownership of gender, which is often perceived or experienced as ‘foreign’, while encouraging the recognition of colonial gendered racism and the inclusion of all women, men, and gender and sexual minorities, and supporting young researchers. Cultivating empathy and creating safe spaces where to share knowledge and experiences, including discomfort and hostility, have been key to both experiences, enabling opportunities to address power differentials and support context-responsive imaginations within academia. Both of these academic spaces are particularly wary of and critical towards anthropology. As a result, these experiences have equally generated a reflection on the specific role of anthropology in the university of tomorrow. Based on experiences in two distinct Pacific academic and cultural contexts with different colonial (hi)stories and their own set of aspirations, this presentation aims to share reflections, practices and possibilities for a more equal university.