Drawing from the facilitator’s direct experience in higher education, it looks at different types of decolonizing projects — those driven by institutions and those that emerge organically from grassroots efforts.

A key focus will be recognizing the tension between these two approaches, as this is essential to understanding the challenges and limitations of doing decolonizing work within academic institutions.

The session will help participants think through the difficulties of having productive conversations about decolonization. It will address feelings of alienation, deep distrust and antagonism towards lack of institutional honesty.

The workshop is especially welcoming to those who are new to these discussions and are looking for ways to start them in spaces where decolonizing work is still seen as marginal or politically sensitive.

In the workshop, Participants will engage with:

• What “decolonizing” means in the context of higher education
• Different approaches to decolonizing — led by staff, students, or both
• The role of belonging and community in decolonizing movements
• Negotiating with the ‘impossibility of decolonization’ in and through the institution
• A participation exercise on building and thinking through Principles
• A discussion on contextualising Decolonizing UvA

This workshop is organized in collaboration with the FdR Diversity Committee and the Graduate Studies Committee.

Ahmed Raza Memon is a lecturer and facilitator for student-led decolonizing movements and organizing spaces. He is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Decolonial Futures Research Priority Area. Ahmed's scholarship sits at the intersections of international law, global governance, history and decolonial theory and practice.  He was a member of the Decolonise University of Kent student-staff project between 2018-2020 and has worked on building principles of a decolonial space and student manifesto in 2019. He was the co-organiser for the Decolonising Research Collective at the University of Kent between 2018-2020 and is currently a co-editor of Decolonial Dialogues (an interdisciplinary forum for decolonial practice, teaching and research). Between 2021-2023, Ahmed also facilitated and co-led Cardiff Decolonising Project funded by the ESRC-AHRC Impact Acceleration Program and has an upcoming report to be launched by the Learned Society of Wales workshop on ‘Decolonising in Practice’.