This book explores the potential of participatory research and the capability approach to transform understandings of higher education. The editors and contributors illuminate the importance of epistemic in/justice as a foundation to a reflexive, inclusive and decolonial approach to knowledge, as well as its importance to democratic life and participation in higher education. Drawing together eight global case studies, the authors argue for an ecology of knowledge that expands epistemic capabilities in higher education through teaching, research and policy making. Moreover, the chapters illustrate how these epistemic capabilities can be marginalised by both institutions and structural and historical factors; as well as the potential for possibilities when spaces are opened for genuine participation and designed for a plurality of voices. This book will appeal to scholars of social justice and participatory research as well as ongoing debates around decolonising the academy.

This book investigates the power of art to enhance human development and to initiate positive social change for individuals and societies recovering from conflict. Interventions aimed at reinforcing social justice and bringing communities together after conflict are often accused of being top-down, or failing to consider all groups and contexts within a society. The use of participatory arts can help to address these challenges by fostering community engagement, social cohesion, influencing public policy, and ultimately, advancing social justice. Arts-based methods can be particularly effective at reaching youth communities, providing voice and political agency to young people who are often not given a platform. Situated at the intersection of participatory arts, social and epistemic justice, this book brings together case studies from across the world to reflect on best practice for the use of bottom-up, participatory, co-produced, and co-designed arts processes in conflict settings. This book provides an important guide to the role that arts can play in addressing epistemic injustice and contributing to social justice and human development. As such, it will be of interest to international development and arts practitioners, policy makers, and to students and researchers across participatory arts, youth studies, international development, social justice, and peace and conflict studies.

In this book Carmen Martinez-Vargas explores how academic participatory research and the way it is carried out can contribute to more, or less, social justice. Adopting theoretical and empirical approaches, and addressing multiple complex, intersectional issues, this book offers inspiration for scholars and practitioners to open up alternative pathways to social justice, viewed through a Global South lens. Martinez-Vargas examines the colonial roots of research and emphasises the importance of problematising current practices and limitations in order to establish more just and democratic participatory research practices. Although practitioners have been challenging the Western roots of research and participatory research for decades, their goals can be compromised by pluralities and contradictions in the field. This book aims not to replicate past participatory research approaches, but to offer an innovative theoretical foundation—the Capabilities Approach—and an innovative participatory practice called ‘Democratic Capabilities Research’. Democratising Participatory Research is not only timely and relevant in South Africa, but also in the Global North owing to the current crisis of values jeopardising the peaceful existence of diverse societies. The book gives essential recommendations for capabilities and human development scholars to reframe their perspectives and uses of the Capabilities Approach, as well as for participatory practitioners to critically reflect on their practices and their often limited conceptualisation of participation.

This book critically explores Global South perspectives, examining marginalised voices and issues whilst challenging the supremacy of Global North perspectives in literature. The unique value of this book lies in its extensive coverage of various Southern challenges, including disaster management, climate change, communication, resilience, gender, education, and disability. It also underscores the relevance of indigenous philosophies such as animism, Buen Vivir, Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, Neozapatism, Qi vitality, Taoism, and Ubuntu. Stemming from regions as diverse as Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America, these philosophies are brought into public discourse. By demonstrating their practicality in designing intervention programs and influencing policy-making, the book fills a critical gap in global Southern literature while promoting context-specific knowledge for improving well-being in the Global South contexts. This book’s content resonates with a diverse audience, encompassing students, academics, researchers, NGOs, and policymakers from postcolonial states in the Global South and those from Global North countries. Furthermore, it is highly relevant to communities within the Global North that mirror the Global South – those grappling with equity issues for indigenous populations. It has a versatile appeal that transcends disciplinary boundaries, encompassing cultural studies, sociology, international development, philosophy, and postcolonial studies, thus making it accessible to all educational levels. It holds particular interest for those in development studies, indigenous studies, government departments globally, international organisations, and universities worldwide.

Academic Staff Development: Disruptions, Complexities, Change (Envisioning New Futures) by Nalini Chitanand and Shoba Rathilal delves into the transformative journey of academic staff development. This collection is prompted by the magnification of the challenges faced by higher education institutions during COVID-19, particularly in South Africa and the Global South, and explores the critical role of academic staff development in navigating crises. With a reflexive approach and insights from diverse disciplines, the book extends beyond traditional models, offering new perspectives and possible contributions to postgraduate education, community engagement, and the broader academic role. A timely and insightful contribution, this book propels the evolving field of academic staff development into new horizons, fostering resilience, creativity, innovation, and holistic growth in higher education, for transformative and sustainable experiences.

Understanding justice, for many, begins with questions of injustice. This volume pushes us to consider the extent to which our scholarly and everyday practices are, or can become, socially just. In this edited collection, international contributors reflect on what the practice of ‘justice’ means to them, and discuss how it animates and shapes their research across diverse fields from international relations to food systems, political economy, migration studies and criminology. Giving insights into real life research practices for scholars at all levels, this book aids our understanding of how to employ and live justice through our work and daily lives.

Transnational composition is a site for engaging with difference across populations, economies, languages, and borders and for asking how cultures, languages, and national imaginaries interanimate one another. Organized in three parts, the book addresses the transnational in composition in scholarship, teaching, and administration. It brings together contributions from institutional, geopolitical, and cultural contexts ranging across North America, Europe, Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the Caribbean and covers writing in English, Chinese, multiple European languages, Latin American Spanish, African and West Indian Creoles, and Guianan French. Exploring the relationship among transnational, international, global, and translingual approaches to composition--while complicating the term composition itself--essays draw on theories of border work, mobility, liminality, cross-border interaction, center-periphery contours, superdiversity, and transnational rhetoric and address, among other topics, models of cognitive processing, principles of universal design, and frames of critical literacy awareness.

This edited book draws on an international cohort of authors, all working towards sustainable, decolonizing human development for more just futures in a variety of learning spaces. Integrating sustainable human development with ‘reparative futures’, the chapters present diverse examples of how transformative learning spaces can be created through different participatory methodologies and with different stakeholders. The book will be of interest to researchers, graduate students, practitioners and policymakers in the areas of higher education, development studies and transformative innovation.