Decolonising prevailing systems of knowledge in international development

This article is part of two series of articles: decolonising KM and KM in international development.

SOAS University of London’s Dr Romina Istratii is one of the world’s most significant thought leaders in regard to the decolonisation of knowledge and knowledge systems. I’ve previously discussed her work in an article calling for the knowledge management (KM) community to play a more active role in progressing the decolonisation of KM.

Dr. Istratii recently delivered the presentation “Decolonising prevailing systems of knowledge in international development” as part of a panel session for the University of Toronto International Development Conference 2021. The panel session was titled “Decolonizing prevailing systems of knowledge production.”

The slides from Dr. Istratii’s presentation are now available¹.

Her presentation includes discussion of Global North dominance in regard to both ways of knowing (epistemology) and academic publishing, and also sets out what needs to be done to change the system.

These themes are also explored in the Colonial influences section of our Open access to scholarly knowledge in the digital era series, and in two knowledge cafes facilitated by the Knowledge Management for Development (KM4Dev) community – Uncomfortable Truths in Development and the earlier Decolonization of Knowledge.

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Also published on Medium.