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Our Reading Course

We hosted our first Reading course in September 2024.Created by Colette Weese, Kavishya Kulatunga & Roos van der Velde. Since then, we hosted another round in December 2024. 

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Our next round will be held in May 2025. Want to sign up? Updates coming soon. 
 

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We started running an in-person reading course to create a space for real-life discussions on decolonial theory and practice.  We wanted spread awareness on decolonization, as well as to build a community of activists. Community in activism is crucial, and creating a space to share thoughts, emotions and uncertainties has been a beautiful way for us to explore decolonization further. 

 

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About the Reading Course

Next Round

We will host our next round starting in July. Sign ups will open soon.​

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This round will be a general introductory course into decolonial theory! In this 4-week reading course, participants will be invited to question our colonial pasts and presents. Through guided discussions we will imagine decolonial futures. Together, we will build a foundation for taking meaningful action for a decolonial world.​

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Limited seats available. In person. 
 

Sign up now!

History 

First Round:

Kick-off in September 2024.10 participants. from a variety of backgrounds (health, architecture, machine learning).

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Second Round:
December 2024, shortened 4-week version for new members of Decolonizing Global Health. (12 participants)

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Third Round:

May 2025, shortened 4-week in person version  (11 participants)

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Fourth Round:

September 2025, shortened 4-week version for new members of the Collective. (9 participants)

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Fifth Round:

November 2025, shortened, interdisciplinary 4-week version for new members of the Collective. (15 participants)

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Sixth Round:

January 2026, interdisciplinary 4-week version (12 participants)

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Seventh Round:

May 2026, interdisciplinary 4-week version (16 participants)

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Week 1

Week 2

Decolonisation- an introduction

Epistemologies and the Coloniality of Knowledge,

Week 3

Week 4

Historical and present-day movements

Imagining Decolonial Futures. 

The Resources

This is the most updated version of the syllabus. If you cannot access any sources, please contact us and we will send them your way. 

Week 1: How has colonialism shaped today’s world & our lives?

Week 2: How does coloniality influence what counts as knowledge?

To kickstart our exploration of decolonization, it’s necessary to fully understand the repercussions of colonization itself. While colonization is often referred to as a thing of the past, colonialism is still visible today. Therefore, in this first week, we hope to make colonialism visible as a structuring force of the present, not a distant past, and to develop a shared vocabulary we can work with—and critique—throughout the course. We're going to start with exploring colonialism as a set of historical projects (land, labor, culture, bodies) and coloniality as the ongoing continuation of those projects. 

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Resources

 

  • Watch two short videos by Prof. Dr. Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni. The first one explaining colonization & colonialism, and the second one exploring coloniality of being, coloniality of knowledge, and coloniality of power.

  • Go, J. (2023). Reverberations of Empire: How the Colonial Past Shapes the Present, demonstrates really well the tangible legacies of colonialism in today’s world (this is what we mean by coloniality). 

  • Lastly, please watch this short video by the Affect and Colonialism Web Lab, focusing on steps 1 and 2 in the “how to embrace the decolonial option” section, and reflect on your own positionality, which we will discuss more throughout the course. 

This session looks at colonialism as something that shaped what is accepted as “real” knowledge: how many ways of knowing were erased, pushed aside, or treated as inferior, and how other ways of knowing have survived and continue to challenge this today. In this way we will explore decolonization as deeply epistemic, and try to open space for plural ways of knowing without collapsing difference or reproducing hierarchy.

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​Resources

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  • Mignolo, W. D. (2009). Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and De-Colonial Freedom. It’s fantastic for understanding epistemic injustice stemming from colonialism and the paths forward.

  • Watch this short video by Prof. Dr. Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni on epistemic freedom as a restorative practice

  • Finally, listen to this wonderful podcast episode from a Resist and Reboot. This episode talks about a group called “Whose Knowledge?” enacting epistemic justice/disobedience on the ground. 

  • Optional: Rameen Siddiqui (2023). Epistemicide: Intellectual Genocide and Eurocentric Modernity, explaining epistemicide in connection to colonialism.

Week 3: How have decolonial movements thought about & resisted coloniality?

Week 4: How can we imagine and build decolonial futures?

This session introduces a brief history of key decolonial thinkers and movements, emphasizing the relationship between theory and practice. Here we’ll work on situating decolonial thought as a living political and intellectual tradition, rooted in struggle, and to critically assess how decolonization is invoked (and sometimes diluted!) today.

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Resources

 

  • Start with reading this classic foundational text—Discourse on Colonialism by Aimé Cesaire (p. 31-78 in the text - also found in the drive). This is a poetic, scathing accusation against the “so-called European civilization” for its “indefensible” acts of colonialism. Alongside Franz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, Cesaire’s 1950 essay is one of the original decolonial texts calling for true revolution—the origins of all decolonial movements and thought today. 

  • This video by Theory & Philosophy also further explains Cesaire’s text: Aimé Cesaire’s “Discourse on Colonialism”

  • Next, watch this short video by Dr. Ryan Arthur, which does an excellent job outlining the history of decolonial thought up til today. 

  • OPTIONAL: Concerning Violence, a 1.5 hour long documentary film combining text from Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth with archive material from Swedish documentaries 1966-1987. Trigger Warning: while this film is extremely poignant and powerful, it also shows brutal and violent footage that might be disturbing to some, so it is entirely optional to watch!

  • OPTIONAL: Dr. Ijeoma Opara (2021). It’s Time to Decolonize the Decolonization Movement.

The final session shifts toward imagination, futures, and responsibility. We explore how decolonial thought is not only critical but world-making. We hope to end not with answers, but with expanded horizons: imagining otherwise, collectively, while remaining accountable to place, history, and relation.

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Resources

 

Choose one (or engage with all):

  • On Prefiguration/ prefigurative politics. Bonfert’s book review 'The holism of prefigurative politics’ of Lara Monticelli's edited volume ‘The Future Is Now: An Introduction to Prefigurative Politics’

  • On utopias. Hardy (2012). Unsettling Hope: Contemporary Indigenous Politics, Settler-Colonialism, and Utopianism

  • On imagination. Wynter (2003). Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation--An Argument. ​

Extra: Week 5: Global Health- 
the past and the future

While Global Health as a field is rooted in colonialism, it is also important to look forward. How do neocolonialist movements shape the field currently? How do our structural, disciplinary, hegemonic and interpersonal domains uphold power imbalances and systems of oppression. 

 

Even more important, if we were to truly decolonise the field, would Global Health still be able to exist?

Extra: Week 6: Decolonisation & Climate change

You could develop an entire reading course on the topic of decolonisation & climate change, however, we wanted to touch upon this briefly, due to the strong intercorrelation between health, climate change and inequality. ​

Climate change is a crisis of inequality: the ones who are, and will be, impacted the most have contributed the least. As a consequence of global warming, the Global Majority World will face disproportionate health challenges. 

Resources

  • Burgess, R. (2024).  Introduction: Global Health and its uncomfortable truths (until page 19). Rethinking Global Health. Frameworks of Power. Pp. 1-19

  • Please take an extra look at Figure 1.1

  • Abimbola, S. & Pai, M. (2020). Will Global Health survive its decolonisation? Pp. 1627-1628

  • Naidu, T., Gingell, G. & Zaidi, Z. (2024). Decolonial framework for applying reflexivity and positionality in global health research. Pp. 52-58

  • Video: A call to address racism and colonialism in Global Health | Prof. Madhukar Pai at AIDS 2022: https://youtu.be/eJQkSO2zw6c 

Resources

  • Deivanayagam et al. (2023). Envisioning environmental equity: climate change, health, and racial justice. (p. 64-75) 

    • Please take an extra look at Figure 1. Conceptual model

  • Deivanayagam et al. (2022). Climate change, health, and discrimination: action towards racial justice. (pp. 5-7)

  • Hickel, J. (2021). The anti-colonial politics of degrowth. (pp. 1-3)

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