Webinar, 4 October with Michalinos Zembylas
DEPA (Decolonising Peace Education in Africa) webinar series aims to promote dialogue on diverse theoretical, conceptual, and methodological perspectives within Africa. Our next speaker is Michalinos Zembylas.
Register now via Eventbrite.
4 October, Tuesday, 13:30 UK and Nigeria time, 14:30 South Africa and Zimbabwe time.
This presentation brings decolonising pedagogies into conversation with humanising pedagogies. The question that drives this conversation is: What are the links between humanisation and the decolonisation of higher education, and what does this imply for pedagogical praxis? This intervention offers valuable insights that reconfigure humanising pedagogy in relation to the decolonial project of social transformation, yet one that does not disavow the challenges—namely, the complexities, tensions and paradoxes—residing therein. The presentation discusses different approaches to the decolonisation of higher education that have been proposed and suggests that if the desired reform is radical, educators within the sector in South Africa will need to interrogate the pedagogical practices emerging from Eurocentric knowledge approaches by drawing on and twisting these very practices. These efforts can provide spaces to enact decolonial pedagogies that reclaim colonised practices. The discussion concludes with some reflections on what this idea might imply for South African higher education.
Michalinos Zembylas is Professor of Educational Theory and Curriculum Studies at the Open University of Cyprus, Honorary Professor at Nelson Mandela University, South Africa, and Adjunct Professor at the University of South Australia. He has written extensively on emotion and affect in relation to social justice pedagogies, intercultural and peace education, human rights education and citizenship education. His recent books include: Affect and the rise of right-wing populism: Pedagogies for the renewal of democratic education, and Higher education hauntologies: Living with ghosts for a justice-to-come (co-edited with V. Bozalek, S. Motala and D. Hölscher). In 2016, he received the Distinguished Researcher Award in “Social Sciences and Humanities” from the Cyprus Research Promotion Foundation.