Social Justice, Decoloniality and Communities of Difference

Find out more about our staff and PhD students who undertake research in social justice, decoloniality and communities of difference

The Social Justice, Decoloniality and Communities of Difference research theme brings together a highly diverse group of scholars whose work is united by a shared commitment to challenging structures of power, amplifying marginalised voices, and reimagining what interdisciplinarity can look like when it takes seriously the experiences of those too often left out of mainstream academic work.

The group spans an exceptionally wide range of disciplines from economics and political science to performance practice, philosophy, psychology, health, and the arts. It is precisely this breadth that gives the group its distinctive intellectual vitality. Members draw on postcolonial and decolonial studies, critical race studies, feminist frameworks, science and technology studies, critical realism, ethnography, embodied and arts-based research methods, and participatory action approaches, often in combination and always in the service of real-world impact.

Across this diversity of disciplines and methods, group members share a commitment to research that is critically reflexive about whose knowledge counts and how it is produced. Whether through participatory co-design, archival recovery, critical theory, embodied practice, or quantitative analysis, their work consistently asks: who is included, who is excluded, and what would it take to build more just communities and institutions? The group is well positioned to contribute to conversations about decolonising research practice, as well as to forge new interdisciplinary approaches to some of the most pressing social challenges of our time.