The initial idea
“Wouldn’t it be great if there was a website with resources on decolonial research practices?”
This thought crossed my mind in early 2023 while I updated the reading list and assessment tasks for my course Decolonising Research Methods. As I searched for practical examples that would be accessible for students and that reflected the vast range of approaches from around the world, I wondered if such a repository existed. I couldn’t find anything that resembled what I had in mind, and I remember thinking that someone ought to create a website on decolonial research – I didn’t think for a minute that I would be that person!
Shortly after that, I responded to a call for funding from my Faculty, which supported my idea to create an online repository, and so began the process of creating the Anti-Colonial Research Library (ACRL). My knowledge of website-building and design was nil, but I worked with a great company that understood exactly how this library might work best.
The ACRL is for undergraduate and postgraduate students, researchers at all career stages, educators, community-based collaborators and advocates, and Indigenous leaders. It is a great tool for an initial search on anti-colonial models, i.e., research prioritising Indigenous knowledges and majority-world practices. The 400+ selected items should save users significant time when searching for relevant resources.
The content below outlines the rationale and the process used for developing the website, in the hope that it will grow to become a collective resource that will be useful to many across the globe.
1. Website name
Initially, the website had a long-winded name, which needed updating after I engaged in insightful conversations with my students about the implications of our using the word ‘decolonisation’ to mean anything and everything that needs to change. As the website explains, the term ‘anti-colonial’ captures Indigenous knowledges and majority-world practices without weakening the initial emancipatory intent of decolonisation as the ongoing fight for returning land to First Nations peoples and revaluing Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing. Professor Max Liboiron’s words on the overuse of the term ‘decolonisation’ in academic research resonated strongly with me, so it made perfect sense to refer to this library as anti-colonial.
2. Open access resources: the selection process
I have institutional privileges and free access to any resource I might need, so I must admit that I don’t often think about open access in my own research. For the ACRL, however, the issue of open access was a key consideration from the beginning. The selection process (see below) reinforced the importance of sharing knowledge beyond academic (pay)walls. I wasn’t sure how many open access peer-reviewed journal articles there might be on this topic, but during my search, I came across hundreds of great open access items (and several others with restricted access) that share knowledge on anti-colonial practices.
Many of the articles, books and videos chosen for the ACRL were published in the past five years, perhaps reflecting a renewed shift in valuing the importance of anti-colonial knowledge. There are excellent journals dedicated specifically to Indigenous practices such as AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples and the fully open access Waikato Journal of Education – Te Hautaka Mātauranga o Waikato. They are perhaps not as well-known and used as other outlets such as the International Journal of Qualitative Methods (open access with an Article Processing Charge (APC)), so I was pleased to come across new outlets with excellent publications.
It was relatively easy to find relevant websites, books, and YouTube videos. I started with websites I had bookmarked and the resources I used in research methods teaching or recommended to PhD candidates who were keen to expand their understanding of anti-colonial research practices.
However, curating a selection of peer-reviewed articles was time consuming. I started my search with the resources I used in my course Decolonising Research Methods, noting what journals published this scholarship. I then used keyword searches (with terms such as “Indigenous” and “decoloni*ation”) in these journals (they included the ones mentioned above) to select open access articles in the search results. I replicated this process over several weeks across several journals, especially qualitative research journals. I also consulted each journal’s recommendations for ‘similar articles’ (i.e., on a similar topic and sometimes published in other outlets). This broadened my search to journals I didn’t know. I then searched those journals as well for relevant articles.
I evaluated each journal article for relevance in terms of the knowledge it outlined on anti-colonial research practices, by assessing the title, abstract, and keywords. This wasn’t just about what I found interesting personally, but also involved anticipating users’ needs (based on previous requests to assist with finding relevant resources) and choosing sources from a range of disciplines and on different aspects of research (based on teaching research methods and supervising PhD candidates). Ideally, users should come across resources they are after AND resources they didn’t know they needed.
I organised the resources in folders by country (e.g., Canada), continent (e.g., South America), region (e.g., Pacific), or group (e.g., Sámi people) to determine the proportion of resources related to specific geographic locations, as one of the aims was to ensure a good spread of sources from around the world (see below).
Once I had enough items to create a library, the biggest job involved uploading each item with as many details as possible and categorising them to facilitate searching through the ACRL. It was not always straightforward to anticipate how users might use the library, which is why it was important to have a simple website design.
3. Geographical spread
Unsurprisingly, resources that were easy to find were from Canada, Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. While most of these resources share First Nations knowledge and Indigenous models, this dominance speaks to western countries’ access to research and publishing infrastructure and funds to cover APCs. In comparison, knowledge on frameworks such as Pasifika models is underrepresented in the ACRL, despite the existence and ongoing use of traditional models such as talanoa in research across many Pasifika countries. There are many countries such as India that are not represented at all. Research involving Sámi people spans several Nordic countries or regions, with interesting insights on sustaining knowledge beyond artificial geopolitical boundaries.
The resources are in English, with only a few abstracts also published in Spanish or French. This reflects the dominance of anglophone literature (and my language limitations) when searching for resources while located in Australia. I am aware that an anticolonial repository that is almost entirely in English undermines the notion of creating an anticolonial library in the first place. This is why it is so important that this individual effort leads to a collective commitment to growing the ACRL with multi-lingual resources.
4. The way forward
This is just the beginning for the ACRL. I hope that what began as an individual endeavour will become a collective effort to keep growing the library with new resources over time.
As I continue to add relevant items to the library, here are a few suggestions:
- Publish open access whenever possible. This process has reminded me of the importance of making research outputs accessible and free to a wide audience. There are fully open access journals, while others have APCs (I acknowledge that some APCs are exorbitant). If your employer has regular or leftover funds for that purpose, think about the potential reach of the work when pay-for-access doesn’t determine what’s read and shared. Include this cost as a budget item in funding applications.
- More journals should include abstracts in languages other than English.
- Write clear titles and abstracts! Some articles were difficult to decipher, and it is hard to include resources where authors (or presenters for videos) make generalist statements devoid of contextual specificities.
- Suggest resources for the ACRL. The library in its initial form is the result of just a few months’ search—there are no doubt many more relevant resources, especially in languages other than English, that should be included. Help me find them. Use the Contribute page to share your suggestions—self-promotion from First Nations and majority-world scholars is especially encouraged.
AUTHOR BIO: Caroline Lenette is Associate Professor, School of Social Sciences, and Deputy Director, Big Anxiety Research Centre, University of New South Wales. Caroline uses arts-based participatory methods to explore health and wellbeing, intergenerational trauma, and cultural notions of suicidality in collaboration with refugee-background co-researchers. She collaborates with majority-world and Indigenous scholars from around the world who explicitly challenge the colonial roots of research methodologies. Caroline is the author of Arts-based methods in refugee research: Creating sanctuar and Participatory Action Research: Ethics and Decolonization, and co-editor of Disrupting the Academy with Lived Experience-Led Knowledge.
Acknowledgements:
As an uninvited migrant settler on stolen and colonised Bedigal Land, I pay my respects to the Traditional Custodians of the land where this writing took place and acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded. The violence used to take this land continues to this day.
I thank the Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture, University of New South Wales, for a Research Infrastructure Scheme grant to create the ACRL.