Thinking Through the Use of Decolonial Methods in Global Collaborations: The Story of a North-North-South-South Partnership

M2225

In the spirit of exploring new inventive pathways for writing centers, we propose a collaborative session that discusses the challenges and rewards of developing a north-north-south-south partnership that builds collaborations across the global north and south, particularly in southern Africa. Given the complex history of North/South collaboration, as the Northern partners, we sought to deconstruct such power imbalances by drawing on decolonial methods. We did this by employing the important tool of listening to/for both the stated and unstated needs of our partner universities and viable solutions to these needs that were specific to each collaborating institution’s context. From listening, we identified an array of needs, such as building faculty members’ rhetorical and writing pedagogy capacities and developing/expanding writing centre work across the partner schools. In addition to listening, our decolonial methods included surveying collaborators about existing programs, needs, and desires before making plans; arranging our partner work days to include time for each school to think and plan on their own--focusing on their particular needs and strengths; then working as a group to brainstorm and problem-solve across institutions; drawing on the varying backgrounds and expertise of all partners; and building in time for community building and story sharing. As these partnerships continue to grow and expand, we invite others to help us think about how to continually practice decolonial methods with our global partners and to think about what these methods have to teach us about how we work with global partners in our individual centers.