DECOLONIZING DECOLONIALITY:
A VIEW FROM DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE WORLD
We hear calls from around the world to decolonize, diversify, and decenter knowledge production and dissemination. But what does this really mean in different contexts, who is participating, and whose interests are served? For the last two years, the GDC has been hosting a series of community-wide conversations about Decolonizing Decoloniality. So far, scholars from Mexico, Indonesia, Taiwan, Mozambique and Angola, and Argentina have shared their experiences and practices. See the playlist of our previous conversations.
Upcoming conversation: Parallel Academia in Iran: Resistance or Reproduction of Center?
May 5th at 8 am EST/12 pm UTC
In the past two decades, Iranian authorities have intensified their control over social sciences and humanities, arguing that they are products of Western knowledge and unsuitable for an Islamic society. This has led to stricter faculty hiring and student enrollment processes, resulting in the expulsion, marginalization, and immigration of many scholars. In response, small cultural centers—often called ‘Free Schools’ or ‘Parallel Academia’—have emerged as informal spaces for academic engagement, positioning themselves as both a challenge to state control over knowledge production and a critical alternative to dominant Western academic frameworks. While these schools appear to resist state censorship, a closer look reveals how they also reproduce hierarchical power structures, linking them to networks of translation, publishing, and even the immigration industry. Our presenter will be Elham Shahsavarzade, PhD Candidate, Social Anthropology, York University, Toronto, who is currently based in Tehran. Our faciitator will be Anahi Alviso-Marino, a scholar and researcher who specializes in cultural production in the Arabian Peninsula
Elham Shahsavar Zadeh, based in Tehran, Isfahan, and Toronto, is a Ph.D. candidate in Social Anthropology at York University in Toronto. Her research interests focus on the intersection of materiality, affect, and belonging. Through a transnational feminist lens, she examines the process of subject-making in relation to the art and artisanal market of Isfahan, a city that holds significant symbolic importance in the context of Iranian nation-state building. Previously, Elham studied the question of belonging among various Iranian religious groups, both in Iran (M.A. in Social Sciences, University of Tehran) and in the diaspora (M.A. in Sociology, Université de Montréal). Over the past ten years, she has worked as a freelance researcher, collaborating with multiple NGOs and film companies in Iran to document the oral history of activists and volunteers in the nonprofit sector.
Anahi Alviso-Marino is a research associate at the French Research Centre of the Arabian Peninsula (CEFREPA, Kuwait) and at the French Institute for the Near East (IFPO, Jordan). She holds a PhD in Political Science from the Sorbonne University-Paris 1 and the University of Lausanne, and an MA in Middle Eastern and Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University in New York City. As a political scientist practicing research-creation, her methodology explores game-type protocols to produce and activate research materials and archives. Her work focuses on cultural production across cities of the Arabian Peninsula, with a particular and more recent interest in the biographical trajectories of monuments in Kuwait, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia and previously, in proposing a political sociology of visual arts in Yemen. She is also part of a collaborative research project based in France on urban and social transformations in al-‘Ula, Saudi Arabia (2024-2025) and a member of the Global (De)Centre (2022-). Previously, she was a lecturer at the Urban School at Sciences Po Paris (2024-2023) and at the Collège d’études Politiques (NCEP) (2017-2020), and held postdoctoral fellowships at the Ecole des Ponts ParisTech/University Gustave Eiffel (2020-2023), the EUR ArTeC/University Paris 8 (2019) and the MSH/CEFREPA (2017). Her research and archival materials have been exhibited in France at Palais de Tokyo, Villa Vassilieff and Bétonsalon, and in Spain at Casa Arabe. As part of her work on monument stories, Anahi was a researcher in residency at Alserkal Arts Foundation (2022) and at the Henry Moore Foundation (2023), and she directed the documentary film Monumenting (2024), produced by Bad Manner’s and supported by Neïl Beloufa Atelier, the EUR ArTeC and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. Anahi is currently based in Amman, where she is finalizing her first book manuscript on art and politics in Yemen.
It will take place online (Zoom) in English with automated translation available.
Previous conversations
Mexico – Federico Besserer (Professor of Anthropology, Autonomous Metropolitan University) and Dahil Melgar (Chief Curator, National Museum of Cultures of the World), facilitated by Peggy Levitt (Mildred Lane Kemper Chair of Sociology, Wellesley College). Recording available in Spanish (with English subtitles).
Indonesia – Sita Hidaya (Lecturer at the Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Cultural Sciences, Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta) and Judith Schlehe (Professor in the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Freiburg), facilitated by Sanderien Verstappen (University of Vienna, Austria). Recording available in English.
Taiwan – Prof. Hongzen Wang (Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Director of the Austronesian Studies Center, and the Dean of Si Wang College at National Sun Yat-Sen University) facilitated by Ken Chih-Yan Sun, (Associate Professor at Villanova University). Recording unavailable. In English.
Mozambique and Angola – Ines Raimundo (Eduardo Mondiane University in Mozambique), Prof. Higino Lombe (Auxiliary Prof at the University of Culto Cuanavale In Angola), and Prof. Isaías Falau (Assistant Professor at the Superior Institute of Social Sciences and International Relations in Angola), facilitated by Alvaro Lima, Research Director at the Boston Planning and Development Agency. Recording available in Portuguese and English (with subtitles).
Argentina – Máximo Badaró and Silvina Merenson (EIDAES UNSAM/CONICET), facilitated by Patricia Lepratti (IDES-UNGS), Luciana Denardi (UNSAM/CONICET), and Ezequiel Saferstein (UNSAM/CONICET). Recording available in Spanish (with English subtitles).
In the Archives – François Dansereau (Director of The Archive of the Jesuits in Canada and a Course Lecturer at the McGill University School of Information Studies) and Bérengère Piret (professor of contemporary history and archival science at the UCLouvain and archivist at the Archives de l’Etat in Belgium), facilitated by Nora El Qadim (University Paris 8 and Institut universitaire de France). Recording unavailable.
Perspectives from Ukraine and Georgia – Olena Palko (University of Basel) and Ketevan Gurchiani (Research Center for Anthropology, Ilia State University in Tbilisi, Georgia), facilitated by Masha Cerovic (Center for Russian, Eastern-European, Caucasian and Central Asian Studies at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris). Recording available in English.