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Decolonising Science: course for PhD candidates

Watered pattern on a wootz steel sword

This week-long PhD course aims to inspire doctoral candidates to critically engage with contemporary scholarship and debates on decolonisation and explore how it can shape and enrich their current research.

The course is divided into three segments, each engaging with critical aspects of doctoral research: theory, methodology, and fieldwork. The course also includes a day-long field trip in the Netherlands to understand how colonialism shaped the development of Western science and a screening of a docu-film that opens up questions on modernity and development in the context of the dispossession of Indigenous people and the erasure of plural knowledge traditions.

  • Start: 14 July 2025
  • End: 18 July 2025
  • Fees: € 450 (excluding VAT) There are no scholarships or discounts available for this course. Food and transportation costs are not included in the course fees.
  • Study load (in hours): 40 hours
  • Course leader: Amitangshu Acharya
  • Course co-owner: Claire Michailovsky
  • Registration deadline: 15 June 2025
  • Course capacity : 25 students (maximum)

Context and background

How scientific knowledge is produced is still strongly affected by colonial structures of power.

The dominance of Anglo-Eurocentric knowledge and the marginalization of other knowledge traditions in the formerly colonised world have set the stage for a global knowledge hierarchy. This is evident in how economic and environmental ‘problems’ in the former colonies – mostly in the Global South/majority world – are often framed by Northern researchers, who also develop corresponding ‘solutions’. The Global South has become a site where researchers from rich countries collect data and test and validate theories, models, and products.

Such colonial legacies deepen North-South knowledge inequality and produce socio-ecological harm. For example, the application of colonial river engineering approaches to exploiting rivers through dams and embankments for economic growth has devastated the lives of indigenous communities through forced eviction and displacement. It has also impaired riverine ecology and livelihoods, and marginalised knowledge traditions related to labour and practice.

Scientists are increasingly being called to reflect on how their research replicates colonial attitudes towards people and landscapes, and actively undo them. The concern is not just about equal participation in scientific knowledge production between the Global North and South, but what kind of “science” needs to emerge from non- Western societies. How can science celebrate diverse knowledge traditions and practices instead of subjecting them to epistemic violence? How can decolonisation navigate concerns of caste, class, race and gender and resist new forms of nationalist appropriations? How can we reimagine the scientific method?

Undoing colonial legacies requires scientists to cultivate a decolonial approach to their research, including the recognition that knowledge sits in different places with different people and that scientific research cannot be impervious to concerns of justice.

Decolonising Science 2024 Batch
This course has allowed me to question the dominant scientific approach to water studies. It has forced questions about what underlies the presentation of an "objective" science as "truth".
2023 Course Participant

Admission requirements

To be admitted to this course, you should be registered as PhD student in a University in the Netherlands or Europe (including UK). The course is ideally suited for candidates researching environmental issues and enrolled in an PhD programme in engineering, natural and the social sciences, architecture and the humanities.

Learning objectives

  1. How the production of scientific knowledge is shaped by colonial structures of power
  2. Explore how Anglo-Eurocentric knowledge traditions leads to the marginalization of other knowledge traditions
  3. Explore methods and approaches for science to celebrate diverse knowledge traditions and practices instead of subjecting them to epistemic violence
  4. Navigate concerns of caste, class, race, and gender and nationalist appropriations in decolonial thinking
  5. Reflect on how research replicates colonial attitudes towards people and landscapes, and understand how to actively undo them

Lecturers

Testimonials

  • What did participants from the 2023 batch say?

    • “The course offered a very extensive and interactive approach to decolonizing our own research. Extensive in the sense that it included a broad array of speakers and learning styles (e.g. not just lectures but also discussion sessions and museum visits), which offered a diverse set of complementary viewpoints on the topic. Interactive in the sense that, through discussion groups and the final presentations, the course challenged us to not only think about decolonization as a theory but also about the practical application to our research. The extensive reading list also offers a great starting point for continuing our work towards decolonization”.
    • “This course has allowed me to question the dominant scientific approach to water studies. It has forced questions about what underlies the presentation of an "objective" science as "truth". In my own research, this will be especially interesting regarding the conception and implementation of development projects in the context of North-South partnerships. How can we understand these relationships? What are the dynamics of their interaction? Which logics and forms of knowledge are privileged?”
    • “It was an interesting and eye-opening nexus between science and coloniality. Getting to walk back the epistemological history in Eurocentric education system and getting an opportunity to look into research beyond the obligatory requirements (achieve the PhD diploma) was particularly interesting. Prof. Madhusan's insight we're priceless!!”

  • What did participants from the 2024 batch say?

    “I realize now that it’s important to critically reflect on what my thesis does in relation to the colonial difference. I realize that it’s important to be very much aware of this and that science can play a reparative role but it can also be a new form of extractivism. Very grateful for this lesson as it was more or less a blind spot.”

    “I am currently conducting research on the rights of nature. I have realised that although I have been reading a lot of literature on the subject, I have never considered beyond the legal challenges involved why it was or was not a good idea to incorporate it into our western legal system. Since I have done the course I think I am more aware of the implications of my research and that for example I have to ask myself first of all what these cultures other than my own think about "importing" this idea into the West.”

    “One of the key takeaways for me was the need to acknowledge and integrate diverse knowledge systems. Reinforced the importance of designing research frameworks that are not extractive but instead collaborative, acknowledging responsabilities in the way of doing science.”

    “Through the course, I realized that science, as it is practiced today, often reflects structures of power, exclusion, and historical colonial legacies. The discussions on "coloniality of modernity" and the ethical challenges embedded in scientific practices helped me see how certain scientific frameworks prioritize knowledge produced in the Global North, often at the expense of local, indigenous, or marginalized perspectives.”

What's more?

  • Suggested Readings

    Hernandez, J. (2022). Fresh banana leaves: Healing indigenous landscapes through indigenous science. North Atlantic Books.

    Icaza, R., & Vázquez, R. (2013). Social struggles as epistemic struggles. Development and Change, 44(3), 683-704. https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12039

    Kothari, A., & Joy, K. J. (2017). Alternative futures: India unshackled. Authors Upfront.

    (https://www.globaltapestryofalternatives.org/_media/publications:en:alternative_futures_india_unshackled.pdf)

    Mavhunga, C. C. (2019). The Mobile Workshop: The tsetse fly and african knowledge production. MIT Press.

    McKittrick, K. (2021). Dear Science and Other Stories. Duke University Press

    Parke, E. C., & Hikuroa, D. (2023). Against Defending Science: Asking Better Questions About Indigenous Knowledge and Science. Philosophy of Science, 1–11. doi:10.1017/psa.2023.146   

    Subramaniam, B. (2024). Botany of empire: Plant worlds and the scientific legacies of colonialism. University of Washington Press.

    Trisos, C. H., Auerbach, J., & Katti, M. (2021). Decoloniality and anti-oppressive practices for a more ethical ecology. Nature Ecology and Evolution, 5(9), 1205–1212. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-021-01460-w  

    Underhill, V.; Beckett, L.; Dajani, M.; Oré, M.T. and Sabati, S. 2023. The coloniality of modern water: Global groundwater extraction in California, Palestine and Peru. Water Alternatives 16(1): 13-38 https://www.water-alternatives.org/index.php/alldoc/articles/vol16/v16issue1/694-a16-1-11/file

    Vazquez, R. (2017). Precedence, Earth and the Anthropocene: Decolonizing design. Design Philosophy Papers, 15(1), 77–91. https://doi.org/10.1080/14487136.2017.1303130

    Vera Delgado, J. R., & Zwarteveen, M. (2017). Queering Engineers? Using History to Re-think the Associations Between Masculinity and Irrigation Engineering in Peru. Engineering Studies, 9(2), 140–160. https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2017.1361427

Ready to apply?

For more information, please contact Amitangshu Acharya, the course cordinator.

Amitangshu Acharya

Lecturer in Water Governance

Amitangshu Acharya

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