How do you 'decolonise' something?

Numerous UKRI-funded studies are designed to "decolonise"

During my trawls of UKRI funding grants, I’ve noticed that the word “decolonise”/ “decolonising” comes up A LOT.

Search for “decolonise” and 997 projects are found, 366 are “active” - in other words, going on right now.

A caveat: not every one of these results is about “decolonise” in the “British Colonial Rule” sense. For instance this one:

However, tens - even hundreds - appear to be.

Seeing this word so often I started to wonder what everyone means by “decolonise”. To clarify - yes, I know the historical context, and what these studies are trying to show (a commitment to social justice through ridding entities of their “colonial” features - another vague area). But how do you “decolonise” something?

You might think there’s an answer somewhere, seeing that UKRI-funded academics are trying to decolonise an enormous list of things:

1. Decolonising Female Missionary Photography

2. PhD Psychology: Decolonising the Psychology Research Methods Curriculum

3. Decolonising Peace Education In Africa

4. Decolonising Hong Kong: Civil Society and Political Participation During the End of British Rule, 1982-97

5. Decolonising the botanic garden: the 20th century journey from colonial assemblages to sites of memory and global plant conservation

6. Decolonising York: telling alternative stories in a heritage city

7. Decolonising a Profession: Built Heritage Conservation and Management in Post-Colonial Egypt

8. Decolonising international child protection in an era of climate crisis

9. Decolonising Literacy: The determinants of success for indigenous writing systems

10. Decolonising the Dataset: Data Visualisation for Tibetan Ways of Knowing and Using National Museums Liverpool's Collections

11. Decolonising Fashion and Textiles - Design for Cultural Sustainability with Refugee Communities

12. Beyond 'diversity' initiatives: Interrogating whiteness towards a decolonisation of the museum space.

13. Decolonising colonial encounters on India's north-east frontier through an exploration of marginalised memories

14. Decolonising the collection: The origins and early history of Nottingham Castle museum (1878-1929)

15. Decolonising the Sacred: Acknowledging the colonial experiences of Tibetan Buddhist collections in the British Museum

16. Decolonising Sexual and Gender Based Violence in Higher Education: Interventions in Theory, Policy and Practice

17. Decolonising the Museum: Digital Repatriation of the Gaidinliu Collection from the UK to India (DiMuse)

18. South African Modernism (Follow-on-Funding): Decolonising English Literary Studies In and Beyond the Classroom

19. Re-interpreting convict transportation: Decolonising the convict transportation exhibition at the National Justice Museum, Nottingham

20. Remediating Stevenson: Decolonising Robert Louis Stevenson's Pacific Fiction through Graphic Adaptation, Arts Education and Community Engagement

Can you decolonise “Female Missionary Photography” and “Peace Education In Africa” using the same method?

It appears not. The former is being decolonised via “a study of photographs made by British female missionaries working in Africa”, whereas the latter, awarded almost £2 million in funding, will “create a visible network of researchers, policy-makers and community organisations that work together to offer new meaningful knowledges, pedagogies and teaching materials for a decolonised peace education” as part of its methodology.

Elsewhere there’s the PhD student at Bristol who is “Decolonising the Psychology Research Methods Curriculum”:

Through exploratory sequential mixed methods research, the proposed project aims to (a) advance decolonisation efforts by identifying barriers preventing psychology RM from decolonising (b) investigate ways to address the global visibility need for non-western research, and (c) develop an evidence-based strategy to support broader, discipline-wide global efforts to decolonise psychology RM curriculum in the UK. This research would contribute toward the ethical and educational priority of UK universities to provide comprehensive, holistic and global education.

And someone else “Decolonising the botanic garden”:

Decolonisation requires a personally reflexive method that situates the academic researcher who, in this instance, is also a practising heritage professional. I use autoethnographic qualitative research tools to document the iterative unfolding of the research process and co-development of relationships, prioritising accountability, context, truthfulness and community (Gonzalez 2003); foregrounding subjectivity and exposing contemporary Eurocentrism (Pathak 2010). These tools enable me to evaluate and develop decolonisation practices in UK archaeology, heritage and BGs; exploring how decolonising academic research can inform international professional heritage practice, and vice versa, in my lived experience straddling both worlds.

I simply have no idea what any of this means.

It’s one thing saying people should learn more about colonialism. It’s another just using the word “decolonise” to make your study sound intelligent. Sure, to another idiot.

I suspect the tendency to use “decolonise” represents a wider phenomenon in academia, which is to use words of significant and sensitive social meaning - around sexuality and race, for example - as protection from scrutiny. If someone criticises a researchers’ work, they can be accused of not caring enough about Colonial history or otherwise, leaving the student free to continue their gobbledygook studies at the taxpayers’ expense.

Well, I’m calling nonsense nonsense - however you try to dress it up.

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