Heaven Crawley Profile picture
Nov 21, 2019 9 tweets 4 min read Read on X
Good to finally get to the @IASUG for an evening of decolonising #talesbythefireside with Faisal M Garba and others. But first, the Ghana Dance Ensemble ti remind us that the inclusion of traditional music and dance is itself a form of decolonisation Image
Important opening questions from Faisal M Garba...’what does it mean to decolonise knowledge? what decides what constitutes ‘knowledge’? are African scholars in danger of becoming pawns in an new colonising agenda? #talesbythefireside
Decolonisation has different meaning and emphasis in different geo-political contexts. In South Africa much of focus has been on challenging hegemonic and Eurocentric pedagogy. In other contexts focus is more on range of institutions that produce knowledge #talesbythefireside
Colonisation created histories that erased existing knowledge in and about Africa eg the idea that Europe brought Africa into the global economy when in reality Africans had been trading with the rest of the world for centuries #talesfromthefireside
Concept of ethnicity harnessed as a key weapon by the colonisers to divide and rule. In so doing managed to reduce the rich cultural heritage that constituted the basis of social organisation across Africa #talesbythefireside
There are deep epistemological inequalities which are reproduced in educational and research contexts. Those who contest these inequalities are often reduced or dismissed as being ‘on the margins’ and therefore irrelevant. This is about power #talesbythefireside
Can’t decolonise in an abstract decontextualised way, need to go back to into the community in order to understand the way things are and what they mean. Not possible to change the way knowledge is produced and exchanged within the academy alone #talesbythefireside
Language as a mode of communication continues to be a huge issue. We are talking about decolonisation IN ENGLISH. No space for local languages and dialects. This is a contradiction and an irony if we are serious about decolonisation #talesbythefireside
By way of conclusion...we need to deeply historicise the contexts in which we are living and the definitions and categories we employ to make sense of the world otherwise we will simply reproduce the very colonial structures we are criticising #talesbythefireside

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More from @heavencrawley

Mar 13, 2021
Like everyone else who leads/works with @GCRF funded projects, I'm reeling from news that our budgets are to be slashed and grants terminated. We learnt about this through a public announcement on the @UKRI_News, no-one even had decency to consult with or advise us beforehand 1/
This announcement was made, ironically, on the very same day that we made our ResearchFish submission, a hellish bureaucratic system of reporting our outputs, engagements and impacts so that we can 'prove' to @UKRI_News that we are doing what we said we would do with the money 2/
Our @MIDEQHub ResearchFish submission ran to more than 250 pages of publications and engagement activities with impacts on policy debates, training, media outputs and more, all carefully documented, detailed and entered into the system 3/
Read 19 tweets
Sep 14, 2020
'The artist and the professor, the mother and the wife' is now online for all to see. This collaboration with @LauraNyahuye of @maokwo was one of the most intense experiences, personal or professional, of my entire life and my feelings about 'going public' are mixed ...(1/?) Image
On the one hand I feel incredibly proud (a word I generally avoid) of the beautiful things that we have created together. I'm overwhelmed by the beauty in fact. The images. The words. These were created in the intense lockdown days and they take me back to that place...(2/?) Image
The lockdown forced us to stop and reflect on our lives and the work we both do in ways that would never have happened otherwise. Being forced to 'Stop', to have the opportunity to 'Breathe' was a major theme and recurring theme of our collaboration (3/?) theartistandtheprof.art.blog/2020/07/03/sto… Image
Read 11 tweets
Sep 10, 2020
On Monday 14th Sept we will be launching #theartistandtheprof, an artistic collaboration between myself and @LauraNyahuye @maokwo exploring themes of #migration #identity #belonging and what it means to be boxed in and categorised as #migrants #women #mothers #wives...(1/?) Image
Funded by @covcampus @warwickuni as part of @Coventry2021 this collaboration has been undertaken entirely online during the #COVID19 #lockdown It's been a powerful and challenging experience for many different reasons. We've laughed and cried, written and woven... (2/?) Image
For both of us this is the first time that we've had an opportunity to #stop #breathe #pause and reflect on the ways in which our own and societal expectations of gendered and racialized roles and responsibilities have shaped our lives #morethanalabel #beyondcategories (3/?) Image
Read 9 tweets
Sep 2, 2020
My latest @scmrjems article with Katharine Jones draws on our #MEDMIG data to unpack the idea that the places people move to outside Europe are always 'in-between' and never intended as 'destinations', an idea that feeds into anti-immigrant discourses...
tandfonline.com/eprint/MCBPYQ2… Image
Treating these places as 'in-between' reinforces the notion that 'everyone' is heading to Europe when they very clearly are not. In reality most people remain in the same region and rebuild their lives in these places. The notion of 'transit countries' serves the same purpose
Our evidence suggests that it is only when life becomes untenable and a decision is made to move that these places take on a state of ‘in-betweenness’, most commonly as part of a personal narrative mobilised by migrants to make sense of the broader arc of their life experiences
Read 4 tweets
Jul 21, 2020
Yesterday's speech by @antonioguterres hit so many nails on head. #COVID-19 is shining spotlight on global injustices and issues ignored for decades: inadequate health systems; structural inequalities; environmental degradation; the climate crisis un.org/sg/en/content/…
#COVID19 is not 'the great equaliser', we are not 'all in the same boat' Image
Importantly @antonioguterres points to long term inequalities associated with colonisation and the unequal incorporation of countries into the global economic system as a key causal factor. It's rare to have such explicit acknowledgement of how we came to be in this mess Image
Read 6 tweets
Jun 18, 2020
Never tried to live tweet from an online event but 4th UNESCO Chair currently being live-streamed contains powerful and moving material which speaks to me strongly in the context of #RefugeeWeek2020 and more generally and needs to be heard so I’m going to give it a try... Image
The words and experiences of refugees frame everything that’s being said but within that the gendering of refugee experiences, of human experiences of forced movement, relations between mothers and children Image
Integration is such a difficult concept, one of things that the team tries to do - and has done over previous lectures - is to introduce new ways of thinking about integration. The theme for this year’s lecture is ‘contemplative seeing’ as a way of reflecting on these processes
Read 13 tweets

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