Dialogues on decolonizing the university: Racialized gender transnational learning

Call for Papers
Dialogues on decolonizing the university: Racialized gender transnational learning
(A book project) Spring 2025


Calls to decolonize the university have become commonplace in the academy over the last decade. There is now a substantial body of literature discussing the concept and we see the business of decolonization explored in different areas and capacities including, in knowledge production, across disciplines, curriculum, methodologies, teaching/learning and language etc. Still there remains room for more diverse and divergent opportunities for exploring gender as a critical category of decolonial thought. This transnational edited collection seeks to encourage a global discussion of the role that gender, race and intersectionality broadly, can play in strengthening the decolonization project within universities. While each chapter will focus on decolonization, racialization and gender in situ, the collection as a whole will also look at decolonization in universities as a global project to draw out its enduring racialised gender entanglements, complexities and contradictions. The overall aim of the edited collection is to engage transnational learning on how, to/with who and why decolonizing the university matters and the necessity to think through racialized gender in decolonization efforts in terms of knowledge, policy and practical interventions. Abstracts may be submitted on any topic related to this theme. These topics include (but are not limited to) the following:


• Feminism and decoloniality
• Unpacking intersectionality in decolonial research
• Inclusive, anti-racist, and anti-colonial education
• Students’ role in decolonizing
• Social movements/social justice/activism
• Restraints and opportunities in institutional contexts
• Decolonizing gender
• The role social identities play in decolonizing
• Interactions between decolonial and feminist thought
• Black feminism
• Black Consciousness/Pan Africanism
• Strategies or praxes for decolonizing
• Defining decolonization in different contexts
• Racism, gender and violence

We invite submissions of articles of 6000-7000 words (including references) on any aspect of the topics outlined above. We welcome varied and even conflicting gendered decolonial perspectives expressed through a range of theoretical, empirical, methodological, activist, artistic, pedagogical interventions, auto-ethnographic reflections or experiments of decolonization as offerings. We encourage contributions from scholars at all levels (from early career to senior). The book will be edited by: Dr Alude Mahali (Chief Research Specialist, Inclusive Economic Development, Human Sciences Research Council, South Africa) and Professor Shirley Anne Tate (Professor and Canada Research Chair Tier 1 in Feminism and Intersectionality, Department of Sociology, University of Alberta, Canada)

Abstracts of no more than 250 words and a short biographical note (not more than 100 words) should be sent to the editors directly at:


(amahali /at/ hsrc.ac.za) (shirleya /at/ ualberta.ca)

Submission deadline for abstracts: 30 April 2023

Decisions regarding acceptance: 31 May 2023

Submission deadline for manuscripts: 1 November 2023

Peer review feedback: 29 February 2024
Revised manuscript submission: 31 July 2024
Edited volume submission: 30 September 2024