University of Helsinki
On April 29th 2019, the Intercultural Encounters programme held our annual seminar and alumni event. The seminar is keynoted by Dr. Rosalba Icaza from Erasmus University Rotterdam and the topic was “(Un)Doing Research: Feminist Decolonial Provocations”.
Dr. Rosalba Icaza is a Mexican decolonial feminist scholar based at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, where she is an associate professor in Global Politics, Gender and Diversity and Chair of the Diversity and Inclusion Team.
We had invited Rosalba to come and talk and she gave a very interesting presentation on the monoculturality of the canons (old white men!), the lack of epistemological pluralism in universities and on how societal resistance to oppression can help us expand our narrow view of epistemological diversity. We all agree that we need a bigger focus on decolonizing epistemologies in universities, and especially in a programme like ICE where many of us see decolonizing the curriculum as an integral part of our university identity.
Many of us come from places where the teachings of the white majority clearly take up all the space, and although ICE addresses this issue, we need more focus on this, not just in our university spaces, but in all public spaces.
We were very honored to have Rosalba in Helsinki and we all enjoyed her visit. We would love to have her again, and would recommend more people to invite her to come speak.
Rosalba’s profile can be found here.