Re-Imagining ‘Empowerment’ in Global South-North Higher Education Partnerships: A Case of Higher Education Actors in Somaliland

• In Event: Aligning Institutional Strategy with International Collaboration

Proposal

This year’s CIES theme, “Re-examining Education and Peace in a Divided World” seeks to address and discuss concerns that impact local and global levels of society through critical reflection and educational research to highlight the potential of education to foster a culture that builds peace. This paper aligns with this year’s theme as it developed from empirical research focusing on Global South-North (S-N) higher education (HE) partnerships’ conditions of equitability and their potential to contribute to peacebuilding.

As this is an emerging topic in peacebuilding and in HE, there are still quite a few areas that have yet to be developed in the literature debates and/or dialogues in international HE for peacebuilding; especially, in the area of Global S-N HE partnerships as they become an increasing method aiming for ethical engagement (Hajir et al., 2025; Milton, 2018). These areas of ethical engagement require HE actors to practice principled interactions and collaboration through HE partnership relations in addition to research design and methodologies. Research into Global S-N HE partnerships is important because they are beginning to play a critical role in international HE relationships, research, and social structures (Pherali & Lewis, 2019). HE is seen as a space and driver of change, as its social role and responsibility is a component in sustaining positive change through collaborations (Millican, 2018; Pherali, 2022). Yet, global HE networks and relationality are plagued by (neo)colonial and Western-centric power dynamics and inequities. This gap resulted in the following research questions:

How do participants perceive and enact Global South-North collaborative higher education partnerships in conflict-affected contexts contributions (or lack thereof) to peacebuilding?
a. In what ways do (the structures and roles of) partnerships in higher education in conflict-affected contexts work toward peacebuilding?
b. What are the challenges/opportunities in Global South-North higher education partnerships to build a culture of peace?
c. What lessons can be drawn from the relationality of Global South-North higher education partnerships?

A particular case has been identified at a university in Somaliland (Horn of Africa) with HE actors purposefully using and enacting international partnerships for peacebuilding. This paper focuses on one aspect of HE partnership relationality through the concept of empowerment. On one hand, empowerment in the context of Global S-N HE partnerships has been problematized as (re)producing hegemonic power relations. On the other hand, empowerment was discussed by the participants as a circular form of process and outcome that enhances individual and group capacity, changing human interactions and structures on multiple levels to address power inequalities and systems that serve to maintain those inequalities within their communities (Chege, 2023; Kim, 2022; Parent, 2016). This paper examines, through a qualitative case study approach, how HE actors create circular forms of empowerment in international HE partnerships with the purpose of better understanding how to reflexively move toward equitable relationships and how HE actors navigate the complexities of ‘balancing possibilities’ to influence positive social change.

The study actively uses a nested decolonial-peacebuilding framework to participate in research that raises consciousness, reflects, and acts. Decolonial thinking critiques structures and systems of power and seeks action to create change within these systemic structures. Whereas peacebuilding “is about seeking and sustaining processes of change…rebuilding relationships and finding new ways to be in a relationship” which “requires changes across multiple levels and perspectives” (Lederach, 1997, p. 135). This nested decolonial-peacebuilding framework developed for this study embeds a type of strategic peacebuilding that calls for a long-term vision and design that includes continuous action and reflexivity to constantly evaluate the sustainability of the infrastructure and integration of peoples and processes to build peace.

This study employed an inductive qualitative methodology to examine the perspectives, relationships, and enactments of HE actors working in/with/through a university in Somaliland, through extensive forms of data (e.g. interviews, documents, fieldnotes, physical artifacts, and archival materials, etc.). A horizontal inquiry and thematic analysis were used to ascertain themes and patterns as well as provide insights from multiple data sources, including the voices of the participants, and reflexivity of the researcher; and possible contributions to literature and change (Creswell and Poth, 2018).

Furthermore, the findings provide insights into how to move toward positive social transformation and equitable relations. For example, as one participant explained, local and grassroots peacebuilding do not equate to perfection as “it’s an ongoing process that hasn’t got an end…It’s a constant revision” and there is always more work to be done. However, ownership and agency create spaces of empowerment to “negotiate access” and “generate dynamics” shaping sustainable peacebuilding practices in partnership activities while existing within wider contexts and normative structures. In this line, participants described the responsibilities of HE partnership procedures and expectations as a site for addressing complexities of local and global contexts through peacebuilding approaches embedded in Global S-N HE partnerships and in HE. Empowering presence through active participation changes structures and processes to develop equitable interactions that critically and reflexively work to understand the complex power dynamics of how educational, personal, socio-cultural, and political spaces interact through Global S-N partner relationality. The key findings highlight the role of HE actors as middle-level leaders holding the potential to design social change and the importance of claiming space and reflexivity to develop mutual processes of empowerment.

Significantly, this paper suggests a transformative pathway for Global S-N partnership praxis, interactions, and relationships as they create an infrastructure for “sustaining the dynamic transformation of conflict and the construction of peace. …understood as a process structure…made up of systems that maintain form over time yet have no hard rigidity of structure” (Lederach, 1997, p. 84). This is a vision in which HE partnership processes of adaptation and change embed peacebuilding to self-empower local actors, GS institutions, GN interactions, and the local/global communities they serve. Global S-N HE partnerships can transform current structures and processes to empower equity and better sustain peacebuilding processes in the long term.

Authors

• Nicki L. Gerstner, Seoul Cyber University and Seoul National University

• Kevin Kester, Seoul National University