Decolonised research culture and practice

Dr Romina Istratii, UKRI Future Leaders Fellow, SOAS University of London
In this video, Romina provided an introduction on how decolonisation and decoloniality is relevant to research and what this has translated into within academic and impact-oriented research in recent years. She discussed the more structural and normative factors that have contributed to epistemological inequalities and the dominance of knowledge originating in Western high-income societies, including the role of funding structures, research development cultures and processes, research practices and research ethics and publishing standards. The main section of her presentation explored questions around research quality
and research integrity from a decolonial lens and raise decolonisation-related questions to think about when research is collaborative, cross-culturally and takes place in diverse and uncertain environments.
Dr Romina Istratii (www.soas.ac.uk/about/romina-i...) is a Lecturer and UKRI Future Leaders Fellow at the School of History, Religions and Philosophies at SOAS University of London. She is an interdisciplinary researcher, scholar and practitioner working across international development, gender studies, religion and theology, psychology and anthropology to address societal challenges with gender dimensions. She currently leads and manages a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship of £1.2 million in Ethiopia and the UK that responds to domestic violence in religious communities working through an interdisciplinary, decolonial and innovative partnerships model with government, NGOs and grassroots groups. For the past 13 years, she has worked in development-oriented research to promote epistemological reflexivity, ethical research practices and healthy partnerships and collaboration models. She has led numerous initiatives within and beyond the university, having initialised the Decolonising Research Initiative: www.soas.ac.uk/research/resea..., under the aegis of the SOAS Research Directorate, co-founded Decolonial Subversions: decolonialsubversions.org/ in 2020 and set up project dldl/ድልድል in 2022. She previously served in the Advisory Board of the Future Leaders Fellows Development Network and as EDI officer for the UKRI Plus Fund project ‘The Future of Groups’.