LFU:online

Department of History and European Ethnology Department of History and European Ethnology

Univ.-Prof. Dr. Silke Meyer Univ.-Prof. Dr. Silke Meyer, +43 512 507 43351
Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Dirk Rupnow Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Dirk Rupnow, +43 512 507 30120, +43 512 507 44007

645603

VO Cultural Encounters and Conflicts: Aurora Lecture Series: Decolonize! Interdisciplinary perspectives on producing academic knowledge

VO 2

5

weekly

annually

English

Students can explain the legacy of colonialism in modern societies. They are able to present the foundation pillar of postcolonial theory and the development of the decolonizing movement therein.

Students can name developing strategies to challenge and dismantle the colonial past of educational institutions as well as different institutional settings and dealings with cultural diversity and plurality.

Furthermore, students gain competences of global learning by familiarising themselves with perspective taking, cultural diversity and social responsibility. They learn to apply this knowledge to contemporary global contexts of social inequalities and their histories. 

Universities and museums are places of producing and evaluating knowledge. Historically, they are dominated by Eurocentric or Western ways of thinking in the tradition of the European enlightenment. The decolonizing movement aims to challenge and transform these ways knowledge is constituted and taught at universities and other educational institutions by giving voice to representatives of hitherto marginalized knowledge systems, for example from indigenous and colonized peoples or from social classes who have been excluded from the academic system.

In this lecture series, we will give an introduction to the decolonizing movement and its context of postcolonial theory. We will further discuss strategies for decolonizing academic systems and museums like including non-European perspectives into the curriculum, actively recruiting diverse students and faculty, examining practices of appropriation and shedding light onto the power relations within the education system. Hereby, we want to acknowledge the uncomfortable presence of colonial thought within academia and challenge the colonial legacy in contemporary society.

The lecture series is part of the Aurora European Universities Alliance teaching programme. Faculty members from the Aurora Universities will contribute to these issues from their different disciplinary and geopolitical background. We will also include non-European perspectives (e.g. US and New Zealand as a ‘settler society’) and inputs from museum curators.

The lecture is also an Aurora Alliance (https://www.uibk.ac.at/en//international/aurora/) event.

Students of all Aurora universities (incl. Master students of the University of Innsbruck) are invited to apply for participation in this course from August 16 till September 10 at the following link (after this date, registration via the online course catalogue is possible for Innsbruck students): https://www.uibk.ac.at/en/international/aurora/aurora-course-offerings/universitat-innsbruck/

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