Reflections on decoloniality and research as I write my doctoral thesis.

By Jamie-Lukas Campbell

As I make inroads on my doctoral project, there’s a component here with respect to academia that I find really frustrating. When we talk about decoloniality – or even Afro-pessimism, which sits within broader traditions of critical race theory ≠ we’re not just talking about what we research. We’re talking about how we do it, and who it’s ultimately for.

The dominant Eurocentric model of academia that I find myself facing tends to separate things out: research is this removed process where scholars produce knowledge, publish it, and move on. Service? Community engagement and outreach? Teaching? Those are “add-ons.” They’re rarely treated as integral to what it means to be a researcher.

But for me, that separation just doesn’t work. It is counterproductive to the skills I am developing, my research methodology, and my academic practice as an intersectional scholar. 

My experience, as someone doing a PhD within a European institution, has been shaped by that disconnect. I came into this wanting more than just to deepen my knowledge. I wanted to build space to think and question and to teach, share, and inform; I have long been inspired by bell hooks’ works and mission to use education as a means to empower. I wanted to be in community with people and to facilitate ideas, not just write about them.

What I’ve found, however, is a rigidity to academia that often feels extractive. The process is streamlined: get in, produce research, publish, get out (or stay and repeat). There’s very little time or formal long-term support for developing the kinds of skills that actually connect research(ers) to the outside world – skills around education, communication, co-production or community outreach, and dissemination. I am not so naive or lacking situational awareness that I do not realize the pressures imposed on those in the academy: they are expected to research, teach, drive social impact, generate business, recruit, mentor, source funding, travel, and still hold onto a semblance of themselves that attracted them into the academy into the first place. But siloed research is neither sustainable nor fair to the academy itself, the community nor tax payers and the public at-large.

And, ultimately, regardless, research doesn’t stand on its own. Or at least, it shouldn’t.

Research is meant to educate, connect, and empower. It’s meant to be shared. Especially when it’s publicly funded – when the people are literally paying for us to be here – how can we justify doing work that never touches their lives, especially as it relates to the humanities and social sciences? How is it okay that research outputs are written in language only other academics can understand? How is that not gatekeeping? How does that not produce an entire separate class of people that feeds into the current – and very vocal – attacks against the academy? Why would tax payers fund a system that actively excludes or silences them? Why would tax payers support a system that extracts from them without authentically engaging and empowering them?

What I’m saying is: research, communication, and lived experience must go hand-in-hand. That’s not a radical idea – it’s just an honest and sustainable approach to an antiquated system that centers dominant Eurocentric narratives that gatekeeps and polices knowledge. If we’re talking seriously about decolonial approaches to scholarship, then that has to include dismantling the ivory tower logic that treats knowledge as something to hoard, not something to circulate. Decoloniality, to me, means breaking down the structures that make knowledge exclusive, elitist, extractive, and disconnected. It’s not just about citing different authors; it’s about reshaping who research is for and with.

That’s especially true in the humanities and social sciences. These are disciplines that should be the most flexible and grounded in community. But instead, they’re often the worst offenders – lost in prestige, distant thinking, and inaccessible language.

Meanwhile, fields like tech, medicine, or biology are expected to deliver something to society. There’s an accountability loop, even if it’s imperfect. But in the humanities – and, arguably, perhaps the broader social sciences community? There’s often no expectation of public return. No built-in culture of giving back, of being legible to the world. That power imbalance between researchers and human communities reproduces a culture by which the researcher is the extractor of experiences and the people are the extracted whose knowledge is to be reconstructed. 

And that’s exactly what I challenge in my own methodological approach.

I’m not saying research in the humanities or the broader social sciences is the problem. I’m saying the narrow framing of research – and the rigid, inflexible approach to processes – as production is the problem. When we value outputs over impact, when we treat public engagement as optional or superficial, we lose the opportunity to make our work truly matter.

So yeah, this is something I sit with a lot. I want my PhD to be a contribution. I want to educate, communicate, support, and serve. I want the academy to recognise that service isn’t separate from research: it’s part of it. And if we don’t move toward that model, then we’re just recreating the same elitist structures we claim to be studying and critiquing. Highly politicized attacks against the academy have already resulted in billions of dollars of cuts to research and higher education – open access courses, calls for (pseudo) ‘academic freedom’ (but for who?), and open lectures do not help realize the great transgression that bell hooks envisioned. Our communities, our scholars, our youth deserve better.

Because knowledge that isn’t accessible? That isn’t accountable? That doesn’t serve? That’s not decolonial. And to be honest, I don’t think it’s good or sustainable scholarship either.