Bending the Master’s Tools? Researching Blackness and (Anti)Racism in Academia
As part of the Critical Approaches to Race Seminar Series, we are honored to welcome Fọláṣadé Ajayi, PhD Researcher at the Migration, Diversity and Justice Research Centre at the Brussels School of Governance.
Reflecting on personal experiences and thinking with different Black studies scholars, this seminar engages with the potentialities and limits of academia for transformative knowledge and realities. Historically, academia has played a pivotal role in the development of race-thinking, racialised hierarchies, colonialism, genocide, and enslavement. In short, academic knowledge production has been key for mapping and mastering the world. At the same time, decolonial (racialised) scholars continue to provide empowering knowledge and spaces despite the coloniality of Western academia. This seminar opens a space for sharing, discussing, and reflecting on these tensions by asking: What does it mean for our research if academia and its dominant epistemologies are master’s tools?
About the Speaker:
Folasade Ajayi is a PhD Researcher at the Brussels School of Governance, where she is affiliated with the ‘Migration, Diversity and Justice Research Centre.’ She is also a member of the ‘Brussels Interdisciplinary Research Centre for Migration and Minorities’ (BIRMM) and the RHEA Centre of Expertise on Gender, Diversity and Intersectionality. Her research focuses on Black activism and Black feminist imagination, intersectionality, and anti-racist policies.
Ajayi earned an MA (summa cum laude) and a BA in Social Sciences from Humboldt University Berlin and studied Political Sciences at Université Libre de Bruxelles. She has been actively involved in Black grassroots organizations in Berlin and contributed to an international research project mapping the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests in Europe. This project was a collaboration between the German Institute for Migration and Integration Studies (DeZIM e.V.), the University of Copenhagen, Scuola Normale Superiore, and the Polish Academy of Sciences.
Her research interests include social movements, anti-discrimination policies, migration and minorities, racism and anti-racism, intersectionality, race politics, and political sociology.
If you want to join this seminar, please send us an email at birmm@vub.be