Avoiding the Colonial Trap: Reflections on the Politics of Knowledge

The COVID-19 pandemic has made historical and contemporary colonial relationships between and within States more salient.

This situation is also apparent within the research process itself, adding a new dimension to pre-existing debates on positionality and the politics of knowledge production.

With reference to a research project focusing on colonial legacy and Transitional Justice in Colombia, this seminar offers a series of reflections on the ways in which the pandemic has affected research inequalities between the Global North and Global South.

To conclude, we look at what COVID-19 can teach us in terms of opportunities to decolonise our research.

Claire Wright

Claire Wright is Research Fellow at the School of Law, Queen's University Belfast, where she is working on a project analysing the relevance of colonial legacies for present day peacebuilding processes.

After receiving her doctorate in Political Science from the University of Salamanca (Spain), she worked as Lecturer at Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León and Universidad de Monterrey (Mexico).

She is co-editor of The Prior Consultation of Indigenous Peoples. Inside the Implementation Gap (with Alexandra Tomaselli), published by Routledge in 2019.

In 2022, she published the article “Navigating Colonial Debris. Structural Challenges for Colombia’s Peace Accord”, in Peacebuilding (co-authored with Bill Rolston and Fionnuala Ní Aoláin).

Event type

This event is hybrid.

Registration

• In-person registration
• Online registration