Decolonial Futures
The Decolonial Futures Research Priority Area establishes collaborations on decolonial research across the Humanities, Law, and Behavioural and Social Science Faculties. The RPA understands ‘coloniality’ as a form of power that emerged in the modern period to determine how people are categorized, how power and wealth are distributed, and how social exclusion takes place. ‘Decoloniality’ refers to the recognition and redress of the systemic injustices produced by colonial power and its legacies.
Three key fields
Decolonial Futures identifies three key fields which have each been shaped by colonial histories and knowledge formations and require further interdisciplinary research towards their decolonial transformation:
- museums, archives, and cultural practices;
- migrations, mobility, and borders;
- ecology, sustainability, and climate change.
As the RPA progresses, it will encourage dialogue across these themes – through events, seed grants, research/dialogue forums, and visiting scholar programmes.
The RPA aims to bring together UvA staff, PhD candidates, and students from the above-mentioned faculties and other faculties, as well as public and (para)institutional communities that are interested in or have been having similar conversations around the decolonial as method – academic as much as institutional and social.