What is the research future you’d like to see? Join me in Imagining Decolonial Research Futures.
As we think and write about decolonizing…
the academy
our research methods and practices
ways of sharing knowledge through teaching, our pedagogy, and knowledge mobilization
…we also need to dream and image new research futures.
As we critique, and develop new method and practices, can we also imagine what these new research and teaching spaces look like? How they are experienced? The sounds, smells, and emotions they elicit?
This is a call to all of you who want a different academic world. These are teaching and research futurisms. Inspired by the visionary work of afrofuturists and movements in indigenous futurisms. And by all the “ghosts and monsters of the anthropocene” that Anna Tsing, Heather Swanson, Elaine Gan, and Nils Bubandt reminds us exist.
I’m working with Judy Dow on a book that shares our experiences in indigenous pedagogy, creative stem, and practices that guide youth, students, teachers, and researchers in reclaiming the ability to read the land and “map” their stories. We were both overjoyed to find that we had both been using similar creative approaches — comics, animation, basket making, weaving, virtual reality platforms, and other crafting forms — to reclaim tangible and intangible heritage and tell stories. All with of my work is aimed at healing, individuals and communities. To contribute to indigenous peoples healing from historical trauma and unresolved grief. And to healing the land and water.
I invite you to join me in using creative imaginings to Imagine Decolonial Research Futures. Using creative practices, be it painting, beading, knitting, or narrative, imagine and dream decolonial research and teaching spaces, experiences, classrooms. Shadowboxes, fiction, poems, cakes, maps, or music. To get to these places we wish to see, we have to first imagine them. Share your story here. I’m gathering written stories for an edited volume, adding visual work on this website, and linking them all in an immersive 360 story via Thing Link.
Contact me (satalay@umass.edu) to share a decolonial research future.