Paper short abstract:

We reflect on the process of working on a research project that seeks to reimagine reproduction in Africa. We examine the process through which we articulate the research agenda and focus on the process of networking and building a cohort of support.

Paper long abstract:

We reflect on the process of working on a project that seeks to reimagine reproduction in Africa. Our project aims to develop a cohort of emerging African scholars based in and working on reframing the reproductive agenda on the continent. In doing so, we shift the focus of reproduction away from the western gaze and the preoccupation with biomedical concerns and birth control by thinking collectively with emerging scholars in reimagining reproductive futures in Africa. We argue that this process of researching reproduction and reimagining futures is part of decolonising and transforming knowledge production, critical in higher education institutions, which have far too long been dominated by Western and colonial paradigms. However, as we show, this process is not easy. The paper focuses on two parts of the project through which we dismantle the hierarchically ordered conceptions of knowledge.

First, we examine the process through which we articulated the research agenda as produced through, based in, and driven by African reproductive perspectives challenging the naturalisation of reproduction and its racialised assumptions while highlighting caring and creative collectivity in this process. Second, we focus on networking and building a cohort of support in advancing this research agenda through articulating the specific practices that troubled, enabled, and decolonised knowledge production. A decolonial perspective, as we conclude, has utility in questioning and shifting knowledge production as it relates to the naturalisation of reproduction but also highlights the ongoing challenge in reorienting research futures that require a constant questioning of our practices.