Decolonising doctoral education in an era of pandemic

Pandemics have acted as significant prompts for change in global history and education (Cabeleira and Madeira, 2022; Falode et al., 2021; Priem, 2022; Novella, 2022; Spieker, 2022). Although they have signalled the end of some practices, they have also amplified pre-existing trends and generated new theoretical and practical directions (Peters et al., 2022; Sobe, 2022). For example, as suggested by Falode et al. (2021), the Plague of Justinian in 542–590 AD heralded the end of the Roman empire and the beginnings of medieval history in Europe, while the Black Death in Europe led to the cultural flowering of the Renaissance in the 15th century. The COVID-19 pandemic from 2020 onwards has become a critical turning point in global history and education. The intense periods of high mortality, travel restrictions and public lockdowns appear to be over. However, our hopes for a fully post-pandemic world remain only aspirational with fresh outbreaks and new variants frequently emerging. Although the pandemic has had a significant impact upon doctoral education worldwide, it also presents us with opportunities to revitalise the doctorate to meet the changing needs of the 21st century. Calls for new types of doctorates that respond to the world’s urgent need for creativity, inclusivity and interdisciplinarity (Gough et al., 2021) in the face of the ongoing pandemic have directed attention towards new possibilities for research education.

The death of George Floyd in the USA in June 2020 and the subsequent #Black Lives Matter (#BLM) protests around the world have also drawn our attention to the need for solidarity and cultural inclusion. Mass protests swept the world in June 2020 even though the risk of contracting COVID-19 was high (Isaacs et al., 2020). The US, UK and Canadian #BLM movement began in 2013 with a mission to “eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted upon Black communities […] By combating and countering acts of violence, creating space for Black imagination and innovation, and centring Black joy, we are winning immediate improvements in our lives” (Black Lives Matter, 2023, n.d.). Bell et al. (2021, p. 42) defined white supremacy as “an institutional system of power that normalizes, privileges, and maintains whiteness and white advantages in all spheres of life, including higher education”. Therefore, calls for greater cultural inclusion in higher education including doctoral education have intensified as a result of the #BLM movement (Manathunga et al., 2022; Phoenix et al., 2020, p. 521).

The current pandemic has produced calls for to “rethink the basic purposes of education, and […] [develop] pedagogic models better suited to the ever-present possibilities of insecurity, risk and relentless change” (Peters et al., 2022, p. 718). Among these calls to reform education, is a strong justification for the more effective “recognition of diversity, inclusion and equality”, with universities acting as “places of compassion, learning and above all wisdom; not as forms of the machinations of government and commercial interests focused on profit and votes” (Peters et al., 2022, p. 721). These calls echo UNESCO 2021 recommendations for future education based on full transformation built upon collaboration, cooperation and solidarity, where there is a shift away from the Western “focus on individual accomplishment and a meritocratic approach to leadership and expertise to education rooted in new principles of building individual and collective capacities to transform the world together” (UNESCO, 2021 quoted in Sobe, 2022, p. 809).

Taking a postcolonial/decolonial theoretical approach, this conceptual paper argues that the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the revitalised #BLM movement have foregrounded global inequities in all areas of life, including education (for more details see Manathunga et al., 2022; also Bob et al., 2021). I suggest that these worldwide trends need to be addressed by broadening the epistemological basis of knowledge production to be more culturally inclusive of all the world’s knowledge systems. This would involve decolonising doctoral education on a global scale. As a key site of knowledge creation and education for the world’s future researchers, doctoral education offers a key educational location for decolonisation. In particular, doctoral education offers a space to begin satisfying the planet’s need for creativity, inclusivity and interdisciplinarity (Gough et al., 2021). The primary focus of this paper is on cultural inclusivity.

After reminding the reader that doctoral education has never only been the project of Western/Northern knowledge, this paper illustrates how decolonising doctoral education involves full cultural recognition and active inclusion of all of the world’s knowledge systems so that we will be better placed to address issues emerging from the ongoing pandemic and accelerating climate change and live in greater harmony with our more-than-human kin on planet Earth (i.e. plants, animals, landscapes and natural environments). These efforts towards cultural inclusivity draw upon postcolonial/decolonial theories about the current state of the world. In particular, they involve working towards creating conditions of epistemic justice in doctoral education. Building upon Santos’ (2018) notion of the “sociology of emergences”, this paper shares some examples where the epistemological basis of doctoral education has been widened to become more culturally inclusive.

The first move towards decolonising the doctorate is to acknowledge the fact that the doctorate has a long history and not only a European one. As the pinnacle of educational qualifications, the doctorate was a feature of Confucian education in China and Vietnam for hundreds of years (Reagan, 2004; Lien and Sharrock, 2014), as well as emerging in the 12th century CE in Europe. So, when we are talking about revitalising 21st century doctoral education, we need to think about how the doctorate has developed across the globe in different civilisations in different time periods.

Secondly, it is important to point out that patterns of cultural exclusion, inclusion and the slow emergence of calls for decolonisation are different in each country and context and often for each First Nations and immigrant community. For this reason, I will narrow my focus here to trace the history of cultural inclusion within doctoral education in Australia as a way of understanding some of the significant shifts in calls for cultural inclusion and decolonisation in doctoral education around the globe, particularly in postcolonial countries. University undergraduate education remained the province of the Anglo-Celtic middle class, male elite in Australia until at least the 1950s. This was even more so the case for doctoral education. Initially, Australian doctoral scholars travelled to the colonial metropole in England or sometimes to the USA to complete their PhD studies. This began to shift after the awarding of the first three doctorates in Australia in 1948 (Pearson, 2005).

The first significant influx of culturally diverse, inbound doctoral scholars in Australia occurred through programmes such as the Colombo Plan (1950s–1970s). This aid programme that focused on a range of initiatives including education was part of a cold war soft diplomacy and can be viewed as a paternalistic and culturally imperialist strategy of targeted aid to Asian countries to prevent the spread of communism (Manathunga, 2016). Nonetheless, the Colombo Plan began to diversify the student cohort in Australian universities and prompted the beginnings of an awareness that greater attention needed to be paid to the Eurocentric approaches to knowledge evident in Australian higher education (Sidhu, 2006). At the same time, there was an increase in the cultural diversity of the migrant community within Australia after the end of Second World War. Although access to university education and especially doctoral studies for migrant and refugee groups and for First Nations peoples only opened up in Australia in the 1970s, there were shifts in the recognition that culturally diverse university students had a lot to offer the Australian community and economy (Manathunga, 2016).

It was not, however, until the 1980s/1990s and beyond that counter-discourses began to emerge about the need to broaden epistemic boundaries through what was called at the time the internationalisation of the curriculum. For example, the Dawkins white paper of 1988 commented that there was a need to broaden Australian higher education’s epistemological boundaries to include “a culture of inquiry based in the […] both Western and Asian traditions” and to include “an appreciation of Aboriginal cultures […] and Australian studies” (Dawkins, 1988, p. 8). However, it was particularly from the 1990s onwards that we witnessed a dramatic shift from international education as aid to international education as trade (Sidhu, 2006). With ever-declining public investment of government funding in universities, Australian higher education institutions relied increasingly upon funding coming from international student fees (Sidhu, 2006). Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, international education became the third largest Australian export industry. It was largely this concern to continue building international education as a lucrative trade that sparked initial concerns about cultural inclusion within doctoral education.

These attempts to broaden the cultural composition of the Australian doctoral cohort are evident in a brief analysis of the key shifts and debates within higher education literature about international doctoral scholars. I have taken a Foucauldian approach to trace these discursive shifts. This means that I am not seeking to unearth a linear, “progressive” trajectory of change but rather I am documenting the key discourses that continue to circulate simultaneously within higher education research. Some of the early research on international doctoral education programmes placed a great deal of emphasis on issues with English and academic writing and positioned international doctoral scholars on the periphery of Australian higher education. There was (and continues to be) a great deal of focus on identifying barriers to timely completion and offering compensatory strategies to overcome these challenges (e.g. Moodie et al., 2018). The labelling of international doctoral scholars and later migrant scholars as “non-English speaking background” scholars exemplifies this deficit approach to cultural diversity in higher education.

Although these deficit discourses have become more subtle and harder to trace, they persist in discussions about timely completions (Manathunga, 2019) where culturally diverse, mobile doctoral scholars (and First Nations scholars) who may not “conform to traditional structural timeframes” are repositioned as lacking in the capabilities, organisational skills and commitment deemed necessary to complete their doctorates (Bennett and Burke, 2017, p. 2). These hegemonic timeframes for doctoral education do not acknowledge that “the way [time is] […] lived, experienced and (re)constructed through our location, positionality and experience – is gendered, classed and racialised and tied to unequal power relations and socio-cultural differences” (Bennett and Burke, 2017, p. 2).

There is also a body of literature that traces international doctoral scholars’ experiences. These include studies of internationally mobile doctoral scholars, or autoethnographic accounts written by scholars/graduates themselves or collaborative writing between international doctoral scholars and their supervisors. Recent explorations have traced gendered experiences, the experience of international student mothers and so on (e.g. Soong et al., 2015; Doyle et al., 2016). This literature has shifted attention away from deficit readings of international and culturally diverse student experiences of doctoral education to more agentic recognition of the resilience and skills culturally diverse doctoral scholars bring to higher education. Greater recognition of the significant intellectual, historical, cultural, geographical and linguistic resources and networks culturally diverse doctoral scholars’ harness during their doctoral studies is also a feature of this literature (Singh et al., 2016). Working in parallel with this literature is the growing application of postcolonial and decolonial theory to the study of cultural diversity in doctoral education, which several scholars and I have been writing about for several decades (Manathunga, 2007, 2014; Singh et al., 2016; Grant and McKinley, 2011). It is within this postcolonial/decolonial theoretical paradigm that I situate this paper.

This shift to postcolonial and decolonial theory also marks the beginning of a shift in calls for cultural inclusion to arguments for full decolonisation. There is no space in this paper to trace the entire emergence of concerns about decolonising doctoral education. Instead, what I offer here is a summary of what scholars have argued decolonisation would look like in doctoral education. From the late 1990s onwards, it was becoming clear that the discourses about internationalising the curriculum could productively be broadened to incorporate the experiences of migrant, refugee, domestic culturally diverse and First Nations doctoral scholars. It was particularly the inclusion of First Nations scholars in doctoral education that led to calls for decolonisation.

The need for decolonisation refers to the series of positions that argue that colonial operations of power remain present in the contemporary world (Manathunga, 2020). The impetus for decolonisation is not only evident in postcolonial societies but also in European countries (Manathunga, 2020). Decolonisation is a complicated notion that includes a wide range of different definitions and approaches (Andreotti et al., 2015). Andreotti et al. (2015) suggested that we can understand this spread of philosophies, desires and tensions by proposing a social cartography of decolonisation. They argued that the spread of calls for decolonisation ranges from “soft-reform, radical reform and beyond reform spaces” (Andreotti et al., 2015, p. 25). Although the soft reform space proposes that “everyone can win once we all know the rules” and “[it] emphasises dialogue, consensus and entrepreneurship”, the radical reform space argues that “the game is rigged so if we want to win we need to change the rules” (Andreotti et al., 2015, p. 25). The beyond reform space suggests that the “game is harmful and makes us immature, but we are stuck playing” and suggests that “playing the game does not make sense” (Andreotti et al, 2015, p. 25). Essentially, this position suggests that we need to develop entirely new discourses that reimagine our world as one in which all knowledge systems are valued so that decolonisation becomes real. In this way, we will have access to previously marginalised knowledge that might allow us to manage the natural environment more carefully and ensure social sustainability and inclusion. My paper draws upon both radical reform and beyond reform arguments (Andreotti et al., 2015) and both postcolonial and decolonial theory. I will explain the importance of my both/and positioning in the next section on postcolonial and decolonial theory.

Much of my doctoral education research for several decades has drawn upon postcolonial and later postcolonial and decolonial theoretical framings (Manathunga, 2007, 2014, 2020). In this section, I will briefly outline the theoretical framing for this conceptual paper. My research is based upon a nuanced combination of postcolonial and decolonial theoretical positioning, which I chose to represent as postcolonial/decolonial (as I justify below). This is because my work encompasses both the work of postcolonial theorists and subaltern studies (e.g. Chakrabarty, 2007) and the empowering decolonial theories proposed by Southern and First Nations scholars (Santos, 2014, 2018; Williams et al., 2018). Although postcolonial and decolonial theories differ in some respects discussed below, they share the central premise that “colonialism did not end with the end of historical colonialism based on foreign territorial occupation. Only its form changed” (Santos, 2018, p. 109).

My colleagues and I argue for a postcolonial/decolonial positioning (Manathunga et al., 2022) because we argue that postcolonial theory offers unique historical analytical strategies that can unearth the silenced stories of First Nations, migrant, refugee and international communities. However, we also recognise that postcolonial theories can be perceived as problematic by First Nations peoples. First Nations scholars often prefer decolonial theories because they rightly believe that “decolonisation or decoloniality [is] […] a necessary task that remains unfinished” (Maldonado-Torres, 2011, p. 2). Decolonial theories assist us to interrogate the ongoing operations of colonialism and also signal the recognition by my research team and I that we are all working on Aboriginal land that was never ceded: a decolonial move in itself. In the absence of a treaty with First Nations communities, British settler/invaders of the land now known as Australia have not yet formally and legally acknowledged that First Nations people occupied the land before the invasion of Europeans. Even though the Mabo legislation overthrew the problematic notion of terra nullius upon which the Australian Constitution was founded, the Australian Constitution is yet to acknowledge First Nations peoples. This is, in part, what the 2023 Voice to Parliament Referendum in Australia is addressing.

As a result of this blend of postcolonial and decolonial theories, doctoral education scholars concerned with cultural inclusion and decolonisation have increasingly turned their attention to arguments for cognitive or epistemic justice. Arguments about epistemic justice have emerged from many areas of the Global South including postcolonial scholars from the Middle East and South Asia (e.g. Said, 1978; Chakrabarty, 2007; Bhambra, 2021) and decolonial scholars from South America (Mignolo, 2009; Santos, 2014, 2018) and Africa (e.g. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2021; Nyamnjoh, 2015). For example, Bhambra (2021) argued that critical theorists need to acknowledge that colonisation and slavery were central to the European project of modernity. This is a form of “epistemological justice” that Bhambra (2021) argued shaped modernity’s “knowledge claims as well as its institutions, but [were] rendered invisible” within critical theory (Bhambra, 2021, p. 76). For Bhambra (2021, p. 77), epistemological justice includes the “recognition of the knowledge claims of others in terms both of respect and (re)constructive response”. Here, Bhambra is arguing for both recognition and respect and also for redress of past injustices. So too, in South America, Mignolo (2009, p. 160) challenged the ways in which a Eurocentric knowledge project can claim universality by “conceal[ing] its own geo-historical and bio-graphical locations”. He calls for “epistemological disobedience” (Mignolo, 2009, p. 159). Similarly, Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2021, p. 882) made a case for the importance of “African decolonial scholarship”, which struggles for “epistemic freedom”.

For all of these postcolonial and decolonial scholars, cognitive or epistemic justice equates to making sure that “all of the world’s knowledge systems, languages and cultural practices” are fully recognised. For Santos (2014), the first step towards epistemic justice is to include, value and extend Southern, transcultural and Indigenous knowledge (IK) systems in the university and re-instate local, land-based knowledge. These knowledge systems are what Santos (2014) called “epistemologies of the South”. The epistemologies of the South involve two key features – the concept of ecologies of knowledges and of intercultural translations (Santos, 2014). The ecologies of knowledges idea questions over-reliance on (Northern) scientific knowledge and instead suggests that scientific knowledge is only one knowledge system within a larger ecology of knowledge systems (Santos, 2014). In such an ecology, all knowledge systems are accorded “equality of opportunity” to build “a more just and democratic society as well as one more balanced in its relations with nature” (Santos, 2014, p. 190). Such knowledge systems would be used in dialogue with each other and would accept the partiality and incompleteness of each knowledge system. The complexity of the world’s current environmental and social problems requires interaction between all knowledge systems to create innovative new research strategies and solve real-world problems. Santos (2014, p. 212) defined intercultural translation as “developing, whenever appropriate, new hybrid forms of cultural understanding and intercommunication”. He argued that intercultural translation is an essential feature of the epistemologies of the South that will enable us to work towards epistemic justice. Epistemic justice for Santos (2018, p. 29) is about creating a “sociology of emergences”. In the following section, I apply this idea of a sociology of emergences to doctoral education.

A sociology of emergences enables us to base our ideas, philosophies and practices upon epistemologies of the South, which can help to decolonise doctoral education (Santos, 2018). Santos (2018) argued that there are three forms of sociology of emergences contained within the epistemologies of the South. These include “ruin seeds, counterhegemonic appropriations, and liberated zones” (Santos, 2018, p. 29). Ruin seeds are the “absent present” echoes of precolonial histories that provide ideas for a future world that is no longer characterised by capitalism, colonialism and patriarchy (Santos, 2018, p. 29). This concept is similar to Mignolo (2009) idea of epistemological disobedience. An example of ruin seeds is the concept of Kaupapa Māori from Aotearoa New Zealand. In literal translation, kaupapa means ground rules (Smith and Reid, 2000). Kaupapa Māori is the “systematic organisation of beliefs, experiences, understandings and interpretations of the interactions of Māori people upon Māori people and Māori people upon their world” (Nepe, 1991, p. 76). Kaupapa Māori is both a world view and a research theory and practice that struggles against colonial domination and confirms the significance of Māori language, culture and sovereignty (Smith and Reid, 2000). It is important to emphasise here that this understanding of ruin seeds does not reify precolonial histories, nor does it suggest that First Nations cultural knowledge is fixed in an idealised past (Spear, 2003). Kaupapa Māori is very much a dynamic, contemporary set of theories and practices that reflects the needs, organisational structures and power relations that underpin current Māori contexts (Smith and Reid, 2000).

Counter-hegemonic appropriations can occur when oppressed groups take dominant theories and subvert them to challenge existing inequalities (Santos, 2018). It is customary for some Northern scholars to refer to Gramsci’s conception of counter-hegemony, which is drawn from Marxist theory. Gramsci (1971) argued that ruling classes establish cultural hegemony in capitalist societies via ideological and epistemic dominance rather than force so that their philosophies and approaches become the unquestioned norm. However, I am referring to Southern understandings that nuance Gramsci’s theories of counter-hegemony in ways that are more congruent with the Global South. For example, while he draws upon Gramsci, African theorist Ndhlouv (2015) argued that the counter-hegemonic strategies offered by Gramsci need to be carefully nuanced, contextualised and altered to be operationalised in South African language policies. An example of counter-hegemonic appropriations include ideas where the Eurocentric concept of liberal democracy is reshaped to address power relations in ways that go beyond the capitalist, colonial and patriarchal framings that were originally present in ideas of liberal democracy (Santos, 2018). Liberated zones are ideas and approaches constructed according to Southern knowledge systems (Santos, 2018). Liberated zones are also those where people “live today as if today were the future to which they aspire” (Santos, 2018, p. 31). An example of liberated zones includes the neo-Zapatista Indigenous communities in southern Mexico. These communities developed their own self-governing education, justice, health care, agrarian and economic institutions after 1994 after the failure of their efforts to negotiate change with the State (Santos, 2018).

I will now illustrate how First Nations, transcultural and Southern doctoral scholars, supervisors and communities have already implemented ruin seeds, counter-hegemonic appropriations and liberated zones in an effort to decolonise doctoral education. I have also applied these ideas to the hidden curriculum in doctoral education (Manathunga, 2023). In this paper, I argue that First Nations and transcultural doctoral scholars bring with them vital cultural resources and access to the knowledges of Elders and communities that are important for the future of our planet and contain both ruin seeds of ancient wisdom refracted across time and space into dynamic and generative insights for the future as well as counter-hegemonic appropriations.

In many cases, especially in postcolonial countries such as Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, First Nations and transcultural doctoral scholars are encouraged to draw upon their own languages and cultural knowledge in their doctoral studies. Aotearoa New Zealand is a world leader in the recognition of te reo Māori (Māori language) in doctoral education. Te reo Māori became an official language in Aotearoa New Zealand in 1987. Doctoral scholars in Aotearoa New Zealand are now able to complete their theses fully in te reo Māori and have the entire examination and defence process conducted in te reo Māori. To facilitate this process, many Aotearoa New Zealand universities have removed the requirement for at least one international examiner (Stewart, 2018). They have also provided translators at the oral doctoral defences and asked doctoral scholars to provide an abstract in English (Stewart, 2018). Although there had only been 18 doctoral theses written in te reo Māori by October 2017 (Stewart, 2018) out of a total of 1,500 theses (New Zealand Government, 2023, www.educationcounts.govt.nz/statistics/achievement-and-attainment), the desire to write theses in te reo is likely to grow as more scholars become convinced of the significant political and epistemic rationales for writing in te reo (Stewart, 2018). In South Africa, it is possible to submit theses in any of the 11 official languages provided the university is able to source suitable examiners fluent in these languages (van der Walt, 2013). In particular, being able to write theses in First Nations and diverse languages transforms our epistemological and ontological foundations, addressing the ways in which language encapsulates power relations.

Other cultural resources that First Nations and transcultural doctoral scholars can use in their research include cultural concepts, proverbs and symbols that bring innovative and often unique insights into their research problem. Rather than having to default to Western/Northern understandings, these cultural resources become a type of “ruin seed” that allows First Nations and transcultural wisdom to be reinterpreted in contemporary times to challenge dominant Northern discourses and offer new understandings of current research debates. One of the most powerful examples of this comes from my research collaborator, Qi Jing, a Chinese-Tibetan-Mongol woman, who studied and now works as an academic in Australia. In her doctoral thesis on transnational early childhood education in Chile, she noticed the tendency of transnational education and aid workers to try and impose Northern pedagogies in Chile. Instead, she deliberately listened carefully to her Chilean colleagues and also drew upon her own Chinese metaphors and language to “critique transnational education and develop new pedagogical approaches” (Qi, 2015, p. 194). For example, she used the concept of “networked-hutong siwei” (Qi, 2015, p. 37) to capture pedagogical processes in transnational early childhood education. She explains that hutongs are the narrow, interconnected back alleyways that are characteristic of residential areas in Northern Chinese cities like Beijing. Siwei is the Chinese word for thinking. Adopting a networked-hutong siwei in transnational education, Qi (2015) argued, encourages transnational educators to engage in respectful and active knowledge co-construction and exchange with local teacher. This approach to transnational teaching enables educators to actively investigate different cultural pedagogical approaches and to work with (rather than against) diversity as a creative strength built upon assumptions of intellectual equality and respect.

First Nations and transcultural doctoral scholars also bring with them into their research studies special networks who have significant cultural knowledge to add to the richness and depth of their research. These networks include Elders, traditional knowledge holders and intergenerational community members. In several cases, these networks may be officially recognised as co-supervisors or examiners. This is the case in Aotearoa New Zealand and Australia, for example, Grant and McKinley (2011) described some of the research-related, grandparent-type relationship roles that doctoral scholars’ kaumātua (Māori male or female Elders) play. Indigenous Australian academic, Linda Ford (2012), also had supervisors who were community Elders. There is no space in this article to go into detail, but these authors provide rich information about the ways in which the inclusion of Elders as supervisors completely reshaped the entire research design, research questions, methodologies and theories used to analyse and disseminate the data collected (Grant and McKinley, 2011; Ford, 2012). The presence of the Elders was also an important measure of cultural safety for the First Nations and transcultural doctoral scholars, providing:

The consequences of working carefully with First Nations and transcultural languages, cultural resources and communities work slowly and steadily towards decolonising forms of doctoral research and supervision. As another small step, for example, Tracey Bunda, whose adopted daughter, Angie, is an Alice Springs Arrernte woman, and our transcultural research team acknowledged the Arrernte Community from the Northern Territory in Australia as co-authors on a book chapter we wrote because we incorporated Arrernte language and concepts to analyse doctoral education. Access to Arrernte language and concepts was provided by Angie in line with the correct protocols for accessing Aboriginal knowledge. We argued that effective First Nations doctoral education involves creating “a place where people come together and look after each other” – “ampere tyerrtye-areye apurte-irrentye akngerre. Tyerrty-arey-ae antartaremele mwarre anetyeke” (Manathunga et al., 2020, p. 89). This involves actively drawing upon “multilingual co-research methodologies” that draw respectfully upon First Nations languages and kinship systems to harness the power of Indigenous theorising to transform doctoral education (Manathunga et al., 2020, p. 89). We located the idea of ampere tyerrtye-areye (home/place) centrally to capture how “many people may come together (apurte-irrente kngerre) including Indigenous HDRs [Higher Degree Research scholars], Indigenous and white and non-white supervisors and institutions” (Manathunga et al., 2020, p. 97). To come together in this mutual place in a culturally responsible way, there is a “responsibility to be good, to act within the parameters of one’s own cultural standing while simultaneously engaging in ethical exercises of caring for others who occupy the space (tyerrty-arey-ale antantaremele mwarre anetyeke)” (Manathunga et al., 2020, p. 97). The chapter contains the following details after the First Nations and non-Indigenous academic authors’ names are listed “with special acknowledgements to Angelina Parfitt and the Ltyentye Apurte Community” (Manathunga et al., 2020, p. 89). This approach to co-authorship with a whole community acknowledges that IK is collectively owned and shared (Manathunga et al, 2020).

These sources of important cultural knowledge also incorporate a role for ancestors and spiritual guidance in doctoral education (Manathunga, 2023). First Nations and transcultural doctoral scholars may try to access ancient cultural knowledge through rituals, dreams and spiritual practices. For example, Grant and McKinley (2011) outlined the role played by Māori doctoral scholars’ tūpuna (female or male ancestors), who provide spiritual guidance for their research. Working with a Cambodian doctoral candidate in Australia, Devos and Somerville (2012) relate how their student had been given a copy of the memoir of her grandmother who was from the Cambodian Royal Family. The hard copy of this memoir no longer existed because it was destroyed during the Pol Pot regime so the student had to use her memory to transcribe and translate this memoir into English in writing her thesis. The candidate enjoyed working with Devos and Somerville and suggested that it was her grandmother who facilitated her meeting them in her quest for supervisors (Devos and Somerville, 2012). Although this is one of the hardest reforms for the mainstream white academy to accept, slow but steady progress is being made through positive examination results for theses such as these that draw upon spiritual knowledge (Devos and Somerville, 2012; Grant and McKinley, 2011) and recognising the veracity of spiritual knowledge and support provided by “academics, Elders and traditional knowledge holders attached to Indigenous support units, chaplains, university counselling services or other spiritual community groups” in doctoral education (Manathunga, 2023). In the next section, I consider how First Nations and transcultural knowledge systems and the juxtaposing of these approaches to knowledge creation and those emerging from the global North provide both ruin seeds and counter-hegemonic appropriations in doctoral education.

Increasingly, particularly given the climate crisis that we are facing as a human race, scholars are recognising that current First Nations and transcultural knowledge systems have a great deal to offer in terms of ancient wisdom and counter-hegemonic appropriations of Western/Northern concepts. Earlier in this chapter, I have outlined how many Māori researchers draw upon Kaupapa Māori epistemologies and ontologies in their research in Aotearoa New Zealand. IK in contexts like Australia and South Africa includes a wide variety of theories, ontologies and methodologies that are particularly useful in diverse fields such as the sciences, engineering, health, agriculture, education, arts, humanities and the social sciences (Keane et al., 2023). First Nations Australian academic Norm Sheehan (2011, p. 69) stated that:

IK pedagogical and research methodologies are now widely used in Australia across all educational and research sectors.

One prominent example is the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander methodology of yarning. While all cultures have different approaches to polite communication and dialogue, yarning is a unique Australian First Nations research methodology because, as Sheehan (2011, p. 70) outlined, “yarning circles are conducted under the simple rules that each person speaks in turn, holds authority for the time they speak, and reciprocates by speaking responsibly from self and not about others”. Shay (2021) extended this original methodology (e.g. Bessarab and Ng’andu, 2010; Dean, 2010) into what she calls the “collaborative yarning methodology” (CYM). Shay (2021, p. 63) defined yarning as occurring “through the establishment of our relational connections (kin, country and community) and our reading of each other: physically; spiritually; socially and in a work setting, professionally”. Yarning involves both speaking and listening and is a “process for establishing connections, boundaries, expectations, accountability and social conditions” (Shay, 2021, p. 63). In relation to research, yarning occurs at every stage of the research process from “social yarning”, where informal discussions are held to build trust and relationships and develop research ideas; “research topic yarning” that further refines the collaborative research; “collaborative yarning”, where co-researchers (i.e. participants as co-researchers) and researchers share stories and information during the gathering and dissemination of “data”; and “therapeutic yarning”, when participants/co-researchers engage in personal storytelling that may involve “recalling trauma or emotional events” (Bessarab and Ng’andu, 2010, p. 40). Shay (2021) extended these ideas with her CYM by creating a circular diagram to incorporate all of the many aspects of CYM (see Figure 1 below). She argued that “circles are significant to many Aboriginal people and in some Aboriginal cultures can be symbols of meeting places, waterholes, food and relatedness” (Shay, 2021, p. 67). Instead of relying on standard audio and video recording methodologies, Shay recommends the use of storyboards to textually and visually record research yarns. This approach encourages greater participant co-construction and co-analysis of the research data (Shay, 2021).

The pandemic and the ongoing campaign for black rights through the #BLM movement have created opportunities to revitalise doctoral education so that we might have a better chance of addressing the world’s wicked problems. In this paper, I argue that these contemporary factors allow us to reconsider how we might transform doctoral education into a liberated zone of decolonisation and epistemic justice. Santos (2018) argued that liberated zones involve choosing to act as if future types of revitalised, decolonial and epistemically and socially just doctoral education already exist.

I believe that a liberated doctoral education zone would actively incorporate all the globe’s knowledge systems, creating special spaces for the revitalisation and reactivation of ancient and contemporary First Nations and transcultural cultural knowledge in the form of what Santos calls ruin seeds and counter-hegemonic reworkings of Northern theories. These forms of revitalisation would ensure that Indigenous and transcultural doctoral scholars can actively draw upon their historical, geographic, cultural, epistemic, spiritual and linguistic resources, networks, Elders, traditional knowledge holders and intergenerational communities in their doctoral studies. Adopting these kinds of ecologies of knowledges strategies repositions Northern science as one of many knowledge systems that researchers can access to solve the world’s challenging issues.

Secondly, a liberated zone of doctoral education would ensure that formal recognition and accreditation of Indigenous and transcultural knowledge systems and languages could be applied to more countries and contexts than currently. This paper has included a number of extended examples where doctoral theses can be submitted in First Nations and transcultural languages and using other cultural resources that these doctoral scholars bring with them into their doctoral studies. As a result, the world would benefit from the unique theories, philosophies, ontologies and methodologies that First Nations and transcultural doctoral scholars have to offer.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic has made doctoral education increasingly challenging, especially in the Global South, it also offers us an opportunity to create the kinds of culturally inclusive, interdisciplinary and creative research required to address the problems of the 21st century (Gough et al., 2021). If we are prepared to activate the sociology of emergences like Santos (2018) recommended, then we might be able to revitalise doctoral education to include the ruin seeds and counter-hegemonic reworkings of Northern knowledge. These strategies would transform doctoral education into a liberated zone of decolonisation and epistemic justice that would allow culturally inclusive, transdisciplinary and creative knowledge to flourish. In this paper, I have outlined already existing examples of this revitalisation of doctoral education. Our global task now is to make this happen on a worldwide scale.