A key element of the university's Research & Knowledge Exchange sub-strategy is to make commitments to long-term local, national, and international equitable partnerships, and to decolonise R&KE. Over the last year, the university has invested in a program of work, led by Professor Tracey Reynolds, to better understand and grapple with our legacies of colonialism on R&KE.
The program is being delivered with the support of a working group with representation from across the university, which has contributed to defining the scope of the program and developing an action plan to decolonise R&KE at the university.
In February, the working group met with a facilitator from EAB to discuss the opportunities and challenges to decolonising the research space and making it more equitable. A key output will be to develop a framework on what equitable partnerships look like.
Additionally, the university has awarded two Vice-Chancellor PhD scholarships on Decolonising Research which are due to begin later this year.
1. Towards decolonising AI safety research – A state of the art analysis of the AI cyber risks to citizens’ digital rights in the Global South.
Supervisory team: Fouad Bou Zeineddine (FEHHS/ Centre for Inequalities); Geoge Loukas (FES/Centre for Sustainable Cyber Security); Sofia Stathi (FEHHS/ Centre for Inequalities); Sadiq Sani (FES Centre for Sustainable Cyber Security).
This project will analyse the dispossession of citizens of the Global South of their digital rights (security, privacy, intellectual property, identity, and data sovereignty) and the inadequacy of contemporary cyber-security research for these rights. This analysis will be done in the context of current and potential risks of AI and intersecting systems of modern-coloniality, globalised neoliberal economies, and authoritarianism. Critically, the project will work toward ways forward for cyber-security researchers and communities in the Global South, to decolonise the realm of AI security research and ally with Southern citizens and communities in reclaiming individual and collective data sovereignty.
2. A historical examination of the impacts of soil and land use appraisals on the development of agricultural systems in the Caribbean and west Africa.
Supervisory team: June po (FES, NRI, Centre for Society, Environment and Development); Marcos Paradelo Perez (FES, NRI, Centre for Sustainable Agriculture for One Health); Arlette Saint Ville (University of West Indies, Geography Department).
Soil is vital to life. British scientists have led soil and land use evaluations to inform agriculture, forestry and conservation development since the 1950s. They used maps, soil surveys, and aerial photos to provide valuable information to the colonial government, which informed agricultural, forestry, conservation decisions and policy change. While newly independent states have pushed to modernise agricultural systems, the legacies of structural injustice from colonial plantation agriculture, resource extraction, and transatlantic slave trade remain in everyday lives. Poverty, nutrition insecurity, environmental degradation, and social inequities persist. This project aims to critically examine how historical soil and land use appraisals contributed to key agricultural policies and changes in Latin America and the Caribbean or west Africa from the 1950s to present.
Professor Tracey Reynolds said:
The University of Greenwich is spearheading exemplary collaborative leadership in decolonising R&KE. Through the R&KE sub-strategy group and the formation of a working group, we are co-creating a decolonising approach to R&KE at the University, developing and strengthening equitable partnerships in R&KE, and decolonising our approach to PGR provisioning. We are committed to transparently exploring and sharing our learning on decolonising R&KE at Greenwich.
