Event Information

Dear community, we would like to invite you to our workshop Researching in and with the Global South: Approaching decolonial and feminist research practices in agricultural research and rural development during this year's Tropentag conference. We want to create an international safe space to talk about personal experiences and a decolonial approaches in development practice. 

Development research and practice has direct impacts on many people in the Global South through the production of policy recommendations for governments and organisations and the increasing importance of evidence-based development strategies. Although gender-critical and intersectional as well as increasingly post-/decolonial approaches are gaining importance and presence in development research and practice, power relations in knowledge production often remain unquestioned and biases against feminist and often qualitative research approaches persist. In this workshop we want to put into practice the body of knowledge of feminist and decolonial scholarship that is often dismissed as too theoretical. Specifically, we would like to address the following questions:

• How can our research actively contribute to overcoming North/South power inequalities, the "tyranny of [Western] experts" (Easterly, 2014) and incorporate approaches “from the South”, e.g. through indigenous and critical methodologies (Tuhiwai Smith, 1999)?
• What role does our own identity (gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, etc.) play in the production of knowledge?
• How can we address biases against feminist and qualitative research and strengthen their role in policy making?
• How can we build solidarity among researchers and overcome our boundaries to move beyond North-South and male-female binaries? In what ways has the COVID-19 pandemic redefined or reshaped solidarity among researchers and which issues persist?

The workshop will consist of both inputs that present theoretical approaches with the help of practical research examples from our own research, and practical exercises that leave plenty of room for exchange among the participants.