Contribution short abstract:

The presentation will describe some practices of introducing Brazilian Indigenous epistemological proposals in the processes of teaching and learning anthropology in a Central European university, for debating their potentialities and challenges toward a multiplication of knowledge practices.

Contribution long abstract:

In recent years, a growing number of Indigenous scholars are suggesting their epistemological proposals as alternative and complementary ways of engaging with knowledge practices. Starting from ongoing and longstanding dialogues in the field and academia, the presentation introduces some examples of epistemological proposals raised by Indigenous people in Brazil, in particular on the suggestions of "theory as practice" (Tucano people), of "doing together" (Karipuna people), and of "territorialised knowledge" (Xakriabá people). These proposals, as well as many others, promote the reflection on how hegemonic formats of teaching, learning, and doing anthropology (re)produce hierarchies among people and knowledge. The presentation describes some exercises developed at Masaryk University by a group of students and teachers toward an effective and affective engagement with these as specific forms of pluralising epistemological panorama in the context of both specific courses and in the fieldwork. These are the implementation of first-hand exercises as a form of knowing practically, the development of collaborative activities as a way of knowing collectively, and the promotion of direct participative undertakings as a modality of knowing in situated contexts. The thesis is that assuming these proposals by Indigenous scholars as proper epistemological methods can support a pluralisation of knowledge practices in teaching and learning and in the field toward the emergence of epistemic collectives, allowing a deeper engagement of students in the activities and more symmetrical relations. The presentation also describes the difficulties this indigenisation of academia still faces to be recognised as a proper epistemological and political proposal.

Contribution short abstract:

History pages often fail to capture experiences fully. Indigenous peoples convey tradition and knowledge through orality, akin to ethnography’s “taste of the Other.” University teaching blends theory and practice, fostering understanding and belonging to Indigenous causes.

Contribution long abstract:

To write a history page, words are often limited: They cannot fully convey the essence of the experience. Following the bear’s tracks or observing the ingenuity of the beaver’s lodge construction involves contemplation and meditation. Indigenous peoples have used orality to convey the “scent” of tradition and the “flavor” of knowledge, the same “taste of the Other” that ethnography resembles. Telling one’s story is indeed a challenge. Being told can sometimes be problematic.

University teaching is a precious means of transmitting knowledge, not only in the dedicated classroom space but also in the field, through participant observation, for example. By marrying theory and practice, the courses taught at UQÀR can act as bridges to raise awareness, foster understanding, and promote knowledge, even “belonging” to the Indigenous cause. In this presentation, we try to dismantle hegemonic frameworks around the university teaching of Indigenous culture via teachers’ and students’ actions.

The presentation will share the results of questionnaires and semi-structured interviews with undergraduate students (Indigenous and non-Indigenous) on the contribution of the courses taught and the end-of-term projects carried out on Indigenous culture. Unwriting here means inclusion of all that is different; in one expression “world-making,” building a living-together starting from differences and their understanding. The threatened Mother Earth will not heal through words alone but through actions (non-words). Knowing how to observe, knowing how to listen, and knowing how to act: these are the key words to unwrite narratives and create true encounters.

Contribution short abstract:

This presentation will explore the pedagogic principles, tools and methods to establish a co-designed educational space with RAS youth and masters students and how to ‘unwrite’ traditional classrooms in favour of transformational spaces.

Contribution long abstract:

Paulo Freire suggests that education can become “the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world” (1970). As educators and anthropologists led by the transformative paradigm (Cohen, Manion and Morrison, 2018) and Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), establishing a methodology and protocol in which education opportunities for RAS are rooted in decolonisation (Turkan & Engman, 2024), ‘solidarity’ and co-design has proved a powerful solution to the transformative needs of today’s Northern Irish (NI) society. In addition to gaps in education experienced along journeys, RAS young people in NI face systemic barriers to accessing equitable education opportunities beyond 16 years of age (Rosato, 2023). Through a participatory advisory group (PAG) and accredited course hosted by QUB Open Learning(OL) in 2024, RAS youth acquired academic and researching skills to voice their own needs and that of other vulnerable populations in NI. The results of the co-designed survey for RAS youth and initial recommendations of the PAG (Mattingly & YP Research Group, 2024) have influenced the development of a pilot initiative aimed at addressing these education needs. This presentation will explore the pedagogic principles, tools and methods to establish a co-designed educational space with RAS youth and masters students and how to ‘unwrite’ traditional classrooms in favour of transformational spaces.

Contribution short abstract:

This presentation introduces a case of teaching critical thinking and social sciences in the OLIve program in Budapest, outlining the curriculum development process and the pedagogical experience.

Contribution long abstract:

The aim of the presentation is to introduce a practical example of teaching critical thinking skills and social sciences beyond the established university programs. This paper outlines the curriculum development process and the pedagogical experience of a class on social sciences and critical thinking for students of the OLIve (Open Learning Initiative) program, who have experienced displacement, including asylum seekers and those with refugee status. OLIve was part of CEU but now it is an independent association based in Budapest. The development of critical skills had been among the main scopes of OLIve as a pedagogical experiment of hope. Students may or may not continue on study tracks related to social sciences at universities, but they can deploy critical thinking skills (practices, strategies) as part of thinking and navigating their own life experience. In class, we depart from the idea that social scientists or critical intellectuals in general are similar to strangers (as described by Simmel). The stranger takes an outside point of view, similar to the position of the observer or the intellectual. The social scientist is also taking an outsider point of view to understand the situation, what forces are at play in certain outcomes and processes in the world? What is the history and structure behind everyday experiences, what are the mechanism at play?The class has a dual structure entailing a theory and history component, followed by the equal amount of sessions on current fields of empirical social research and social phenomena in our world today.

Contribution long abstract:

Building on the interconnected mappings of disability justice, mutual aid, decolonial methodologies, abolitionist organizing, we taught an ethnic studies course on the intersections of state-sanctioned violence, medical ableism, and scientific racism to develop actionable commitments towards dismantling the medical industrial complex and reimagining practices through crip of color formations of collective liberation and community-based care beyond institutions.

We employed pedagogical strategies for practicing non-linear, reflexive, dialectical (un)learning of biomedicine as a colonial epistemology by organizing student-led discourse based on asynchronous lectures, reimagination workshops, and praxis-based collaborations. Content involved the study of biomedicine as a colonial project; medical gaze and biopower; healthcare as policing/care as violence; abolition as co-creation for building alternative health infrastructure. Methodologically, we prioritized patchwork ethnography, desire vs damage, low theory, unknowing, decolonial embodiment, disability as verb/mode of analysis, and the creation of abolition geographies through rupture/abolition as presence.

The course culminated in a final symposium- Caring Futurities: An Abolitionist Desire Patchwork which integrated embodied ways of disabled theorizing, praxis and temporalities; prioritizing desire, rest and uncertainty; and recognizing absences and contradictions as sources of knowledge within our collective experiences. This practice acknowledges the inherent complexities of crip subjectivities- offering a poetics of survival where our relationalities become the creative grounds for building alternative health models. It questions whether decolonizing biomedicine remains possible with colonized methodologies and how our embodied knowledge collectively exists in fragments and ruptures provides insights into colonial wounds and strategies to dismantle them towards abolition and building harm reductionist care infrastructures.

Contribution short abstract:

This presentation discusses the inadequacies of anthropological theory grounded in its Western theological entanglements. It elaborates on the methodology and pedagogy that is both emically and theologically (but not confessionally) oriented and aimed to decolonize anthropological epistemology

Contribution long abstract:

In this paper, I discuss the inadequacies of anthropological theory resulting from its crypto-theological (in practice Western-Christian) entanglements, which I came across during ethnographic research on healing practices in Orthodox monasteries in Bulgaria. I indicate that inspirations drawn from Orthodox Christian theology and Byzantine scholars' findings can broaden the scope of anthropological theory regarding the materiality and agency of objects, as they offer an epistemological approach situated beyond the “semiotics of representation”, and focus more on the "issue of presence", which is still less profoundly conceptualized in anthropological theory. Discussing those problems I will introduce the decolonial methodology, implemented in the courses I teach.

Contribution short abstract:

We recount our process of curriculum design grounded in decolonial pedagogies and classroom liberation for an Ethnographic Reading and Writing course. We explore our experience and interrogate the conditions of possibility, within the neoliberal university, for transformative pedagogies.

Contribution long abstract:

Through the account of a co-taught module in Ethnographic Reading and Writing undertaken by the

authors in 2023, we underline the tensions and possibilities of anti-racist and decolonial pedagogies

centered on care, as they developed precariously within the neoliberal academy and from within a

discipline born in the colonial encounter: anthropology. We reflect holistically on our experience as

co-teachers, from our own relationship to each other and to the students, as well as our relationship to

the subject of ethnographic reading and writing that determined our curriculum design, reading and

assignment choices, to our precarity and tense embeddedness in the department of anthropology of a

neoliberal university in Western Europe, where we were both precariously employed as knowledge

migrants.

In a multimodal presentation combining slides with video and sound bites, we recount our process of

curriculum design with decolonial pedagogies in mind and our approach of classroom liberation

inspired by bell hooks and Paulo Freire. We use retrospective collaborative ethnography to explore

our experience of the course in a holistic and reflexive way, and to link it to the wider question of the

conditions of possibility, within the neoliberal university, for transformative pedagogies grounded in

non-hierarchical, anti-racist, anti-classist, decolonial, and liberating practices. We examine moments

of unlearning the robotic, formalistic, superficial, and hierarchy-bounded student practices of

obedience within the classroom, and reflect on what made them possible, and on whether anything

can make such moments possible at a larger scale within the neoliberal logic of today’s university.