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SUMMARY:Researching otherwise: some reflections on the decolonisation of r
 esearch practice (and production of knowledge)\, beyond extractivism and
  epistemicide - Giulia Torino\, Department of Architecture
DTSTART:20181113T110000Z
DTEND:20181113T120000Z
UID:TALK112846@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:66652
DESCRIPTION:Over four years of academic research in the field of urbanism 
 in Bogotá\, I have been facing very different reactions to my presence in
  Colombia\, let alone to my more recent engagement with my doctoral resear
 ch topic: racial segregation and spatial injustice — astonishingly still
  a public taboo\, in a country which hosts the third greatest Afro-descend
 ant population of the Americas. The spectrum of reactions received has enc
 ompassed almost anything in-between disbelief vis-á-vis my ten-year inter
 est in the country (“but you are Italian\, why would you come to study C
 olombia?!”)\, and epistemic revulsion vis-á-vis the embodied practice o
 f my research (“how can a white and European researcher understand anyth
 ing about the condition of Afro-Colombians in Bogotá!”). On the one han
 d\, this informal talk aims to be nothing more than a self-reflected and h
 opefully critical personal account on some years of research practice in B
 ogotá and the risks (when not the actual performances) of perpetuating un
 equal power relations from the European academia\, along a “global North
 ” – “global South” axis\, through academic extractivism in local c
 ommunities and neo-colonialist epistemicide of “knowledges otherwise” 
 (Escobar\, 2007)\; especially in a country like Colombia\, still widely de
 voted to intellectual eurocentrism and racial hierarchies. On the other ha
 nd\, it wishes to interrogate those “knowledges otherwise” emerged fro
 m the field: how can we theorise over and from them in the academia? What 
 shall we give back to them\, through our academic work? And\, finally\, wh
 ich axiological evaluation can we derive from a non-ethnocidal approach to
  the empirical knowledges emerged from the field? \n
LOCATION:Seminar Room\, Department of Geography\, Downing Site
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