Decolonial Perspectives on Interdisciplinarity

Inter- and trans-disciplinarity tends to take as its point of departure the disciplinary structures of the Euro-American university. But what if we began elsewhere? This panel introduces Indigenous and non-European contexts and epistemologies where inter/trans-disciplinarity takes different forms, and where approaches to learning and what counts as knowledge are not necessarily shaped by the parameters of the research university. In what ways can Indigenous ways of knowing and acting in the world be integrated in culturally responsive research? How can attention to embodied practice reveal undisciplinary possibilities? What challenges to cultural and educational institutions might be posed by a decolonial commitment? And how can such a commitment avoid the risk of “decolonization” becoming yet another buzzword?

Image: Still from Dislocation Blues (2017) a film by Sky Hopinka.

Panelists:

Bagele Chilisa is Professor of the Post Graduate Research and Evaluation program at the University of Botswana. Her research interests include context and culturally responsive research and evaluation methodologies, Indigenous knowledge systems, and the design and evaluation of context and culturally responsive interventions in Low and Middle Income Countries. Her book, Indigenous Research Methodologies (Sage 2012/2020) is now in its second edition and offers a crucial foundation in Indigenous methods, methodologies, and epistemologies. Professor Chilisa also contributes to the Responsive Research Collective, one of the initiating members of the ITD Alliance.

Lily Mengesha is an assistant professor in the Department of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies at Tufts University in Massachusetts. Her research and teaching live at the intersection of critical Indigenous studies, gender and sexuality studies, and performance theory. Her forthcoming book, Critical Dreaming: Feminist Performances Across the Indigenous Americas (NYU Press 2025), argues for dreaming as a tool for transformative performance practice, particularly in the works of Indigenous-centered and feminist artists across North and Central America. In addition to researching and teaching, Dr Mengesha is a director and dramaturge.             

Rolando Vázquez is Professor of Post/Decolonial Theories and Literatures, with a focus on the Global South, at the department of Literary and Cultural Analysis & the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (University of Amsterdam).  Professor Vázquez’s work places the question of the possibility of an ethical life at the core of decolonial thought and advocates for the decolonial transformation of cultural and educational institutions. His most recent publication is Vistas of Modernity: Decolonial Aesthesis and the End of the Contemporary (Mondriaan Fund 2020).

Theron Schmidt (facilitator) is an assistant professor in the Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University. He is committed to modes of research, learning, and making that are collaborative and experiential, alive in the thick of things and responsive to the complex and contested entanglements of diverse bodies, politics, histories, and alliances.