About Us

This multidisciplinary initiative seeks to understand the impact of coloniality on today’s world and the ways in which people and institutions in all regions of the world, including our own, remember, perpetuate, and contest the legacy of colonialism with a focus on the present day (“now”). Colonialism translated administrative hierarchies into a racialised/ethnic division of labour between individuals and world regions. It is the persistence of this hierarchical logic that defines coloniality. Coloniality continues to shape global economic, political, cultural, and epistemic asymmetries today, while it coexists with decolonial counter-currents and resistances as well as with processes of hybridisation and creolisation.

The research agenda of De/Coloniality Now is characterised by two key components. 1) We aim to develop research practices that seek to overcome colonial hierarchies within the system of global knowledge-production. 2) We adopt a systematic global perspective that transcends conventional regional categories such as “the Global South” and includes the reflective examination of coloniality in European societies and institutions.

Through creating multilateral, transnational research contexts, through building innovative connections between the social sciences and the humanities, and through cooperating with non-academic partners, we take an inter- and transdisciplinary perspective on the complex and often conflicting dynamics of the contemporary world. We analyse how coloniality and decoloniality shape 1) remembrance and cultural memory, 2) asymmetries of knowledge production, 3) the extraction of material and cultural resources, 4) global mobilities, and 5) narratives and newly emerging patterns of colonialism.

In line with the contestation of global structural inequalities in the academic system, we aim to develop sustainable modes of polycentric knowledge production by building international teams and privileging novel research concepts that transcend established epistemologies and practices. In doing so, we are committed to addressing the challenges posed by a multilingual world, rather than creating a monolingual research environment. On this basis, we will develop innovative models of collaboration that overcome structures of inequality, initiate learning processes and consistently involve partners from all regions of the world. Moreover, the initiative aims to develop a strategy for global scholarship in the digital age that minimises barriers.