Tales of Transnational Partnerships between India and the United Kingdom: Unpacking Coloniality, Knowledge, and Power in Global Research

• In Event: Decolonizing, critiquing, and reimagining higher education

Proposal

Introduction

The calls to reimagine our world and collective futures to challenge the status quo play an important role in research and knowledge creation in higher education as there is much potential to explore new ways of knowing and doing. One way of addressing this challenge has been increasing transnational and transdisciplinary research in the fields of social sciences that, as outlined in various internationalization strategic documents, can solve global ills. I propose to share my findings from my dissertation on how faculty from India and the UK view international research collaborations including the challenges, their ‘daily acts’ of protest and resistance as researchers, and the possibilities for such collaborations to contribute to the building of alternative worlds and futures.

Background

International collaborations for research are significant priorities for universities across various disciplines, including Social Sciences and Humanities, fields within which international research collaborations are increasing (Barret, Crossley & Fon, 2014; Dewaele, Vandael, Meysman & Buysse, 2021; Kolesnikov, Woo, Li, Shapira & Youtie, 2017; Lariviere, Gingras & Archambault, 2006; Mosbah-Natanson & Gingras, 2014; Olson, 2012). The literature shows that the processes and complexities of international collaborations in Social Sciences and Humanities remain under-researched (Dewaele, Vandael, Meysman & Buysse, 2021; Lariviere, Gingras & Archambault, 2006; Mosbah-Natanson & Gingras, 2014). Furthermore, there remains a gap in the literature examining how partnerships in the Social Sciences and Humanities operate particularly between the Global South and North, as relatively fewer international collaborations occur in this field when compared with sciences such as Health and Technology (Lariviere, Gingras & Archambault, 2006; Mosbah-Natanson & Gingras, 2014). The current literature on international collaborations in Social Sciences identifies some challenges and concerns including:

- The lack of epistemological diversity and the need to embrace diverse knowledge systems that move away from the Eurocentric roots of social sciences (Connell, 2007; Keim, 2010)

- Positivist approaches that may obscure the complex and multidimensional experiences of international collaborations (Barrett, Crossley & Fon, 2014).

- International research collaborations reify global power dynamics and hierarchies (Barret, Crossley & Fon, 2014; Connell, 2007; Keim, 2010; Mosbah-Natanson & Gingras, 2014).

- Global research partnerships between academics from the Global North and South do not always account for the various power dynamics or asymmetries within partnerships (Canto & Hannah, 2001; Duque et al., 2005; Larkin, 2016; Leibowitz et al., 2017; Obambaa & Mwema, 2009; Robertson, 2008).

Furthermore, an exploration of partnerships from a decolonial lens and how international research partnerships can be repositioned to operate as anticolonial are not developed in the literature.



Research Questions

The broad research questions I focus on for this proposal are:

1. How are Global North-South international partnerships formed and operationalized in relation to various power dynamics?

2. What are the experiences, including challenges and supports, of faculty in their partnerships that allow for relationship building and more equitable Global North-South partnerships.

3. What are the tensions in partnerships between faculty from Global North-South?

4. How are pluralistic and decolonial approaches to research included or made possible, challenged or subverted in Global North-South partnerships?

Theoretical Frameworks

There are two frameworks I focus on for this proposal that are rooted in decolonial and critical theories. I use the concept of ‘coloniality of power’ as an analytical lens that examines the intersections of economic, political/military, racial/ethnic, gender, sexual, spiritual, linguistic, and epistemic hierarchies that all make up a global colonial matrix of power (Grosfoguel, 2006). In this conception of coloniality of power, all these factors are interrelated, but racial hierarchies become the foundational factor that impacts and shapes the other factors and our current world system (Grosfoguel, 2006). For example, economic hierarchies can be mapped onto racial divisions, a phenomenon that Mazrui calls the ‘global apartheid’ (Mazrui, 1994) I also use Global South and Global North as a conceptual framework that allows for the exploration of hierarchies of power that are entangled in hierarchies of race, global capitalism and coloniality (Santos 2016; Trefzer, Jackson, McKee & Dellinger, 2014). I use this conceptual framework to depart from using nation-states as units of comparison in education research and instead, focus on more complex and transnational subjectivities in the field of higher education and international partnerships (Mahler, 2017; Trefzer, Jackson, McKee & Dellinger, 2014; Shajahan & Kezar, 2013).



Methodology

I have used in-depth interviews with open-ended questions and prompts to elicit conversation, reflection, and narrative from 21 faculty and researchers, 9 in India and 12 in the UK at the time of writing this proposal. I am using Constructive Grounded Theory that allows me to approach the research and data in ways that are more aligned with decolonial thought. For example, a constructivist approach recognizes that realities and discoveries are snapshots in time that are deeply entangled within a context, contexts that in this case, are being examined from decolonial lenses (Bhattacharya, 2009; Charmez, 2006; Mills, Bonner & Francis, 2006). Using NVivo, I am coding each interview and looking for emerging patterns, connections and themes. At the time of writing this proposal, I am completing the initial stage of coding.

Emerging Themes and Findings

In relation to the theme of this conference, I want to focus on three emerging themes from the research

1. Institutionalizing international partnerships

Faculty from both India and UK discuss the challenges to navigating institutional pressures and processes for international partnerships as well as how they subvert and/or use the structures to forward their own agendas

2. Identity, nationality and decolonization

There are contradictions and complexities in how people understand their identities and connections to race and nation-states, especially connections to India from faculty in the UK because in all interviews, India has been the object of research rather than the UK. There are also assumptions about how decolonization is or should be understood in the UK versus India.

3. Power and politics

Funding (source and distribution) and political agendas are powerful influential forces that shape how partnerships operate and how the research unfolds between faculty located in India and the UK.

Author

• Punita Lumb, O.I.S.E. University of Toronto