In line with my commitment to decolonial critique, I put great emphasis on decolonizing the classroom. By this I mean a critical, anti-imperialist evaluation of how knowledges are/have been produced, disseminated and are valued in today's classrooms in the West. Decolonizing the classroom thereby moves beyond mere diversification of course readings, contents or guest lecturers. Instead, classes and courses are designed to provide students with the tools to critically interrogate and re-think knowledge production, its politics and to exercise epistemic and ontological pluralism in and outside of the classroom. 

 

This further implies a deprioritization (not devaluation) of knowledge produced by White, Euro-American thinkers in the frameworks and materials for lectures, tutorials and/or courses. Likewise, students are incentivized to make use of their own unique skill sets, to read articles written in languages other than English and to engage with the work of scholars outside of hegemonic academia. Students are stimulated and trained to learn to reflect on their own role in knowledge-production, that of academic institutions and are equipped to identify and challenge epistemic injustices. 

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My didactic style is very interactive, collaborative and aims at making students think critically and live more reflexively. This also translates into how dynamics in my often diverse and multidiscilplinary classrooms are managed. Students are reminded to reflect on their positionalities and privileges to be aware of when to give the platform to speak to those voices that have been historically marginalised.

 

Being a White teacher in predominantly White classrooms at Dutch universities, the extent to which I can contribute to "truly" decolonizing classrooms is certainly limited by my own positionality in the colonial matrix and that of the institutions I work for/with. Moreover, while the here outlined approaches partly originate in my own thinking and teaching experience, they are first and foremost indebted to conversations and collaborations with my students and the works of Sara Ahmed, Arturo Escobar, la paperson, Zoe Todd, Eve Tuck, Catherine Walsh and many others.