Format/Structure

Through guided reflection and collective discussion, we will unpack how coloniality manifests across domains such as power, knowledge, gender, being, nature, and spirituality. It helps us to understand how even well-intentioned scholarly efforts reproduce extractive dynamics.

Long Abstract

This workshop invites participants to critically engage with the colonial matrix that continues to structure academic knowledge production. The colonial matrix is not only a historical legacy but an ongoing system that shapes how research is imagined, practiced, and valued. It manifests in extractive approaches that treat communities as data sources, relationships as means to an end, and knowledge as a commodity to be harvested.

Drawing on decolonial perspectives, we explore how coloniality permeates institutions and shapes our understanding of power, knowledge, nature, gender, being, and spirituality. Rather than positioning extractivism as something “out there,” the session encourages participants to recognize their own entanglements with these logics, including how well‑intentioned scholarly efforts may inadvertently reproduce them.

Through guided reflection and collective discussion, we will examine how the colonial matrix shapes our methods, our ethical frameworks, and the conditions of possibility for research itself. Together, we will consider what it means to cultivate non‑extractive, relational, and accountable approaches to knowledge-making, and how such alternatives can open space for more transformative and just practices within and beyond academia.