The full recording of the webinar is available below.
For a varied audience of students in global health and related fields, early-career as well as more experienced researchers, the webinar aimed to stimulate reflection on persistent colonial knowledge practices in global health research. Discussed was how these practices might influence our own research designs, analyses and processes, and impact our positionality and role as global health researchers now and in the future.
Dr Seye Abimbola provided a keynote lecture addressing epistemic injustice in global health, applying Miranda Frickner’s definition of epistemic injustice (“the injustice done to people in their capacity as knowers, producers, users and circulators of knowledge”) to global health research. By providing three stories, Seye described the way local knowledge is often disregarded in research and how Eurocentric assumptions may impact the way data is analyzed and interpreted, resulting in inappropriate conclusions and interventions in global health research and practice. In his perspective on the future of global health research, Seye emphasized the importance of engaging with complexity, learning and connecting, and that these processes should be incorporated in the full research cycle.
After the keynote, a round table discussion followed addressing alternative ways of ‘knowing’ in global health research, conducting reflexive global health research and avoiding the (re)production of colonial research practices. Dr Zuleika Sheik reflected on the importance of shifting away from knowledge production. She reflected on the need for questioning methodology itself and refusing methods that do not account for a positionality that is non-Western or a non-Western understanding of the self. Zuleika addressed the need to move towards knowledge cultivation and ‘unlearn’ by changing our focus on results and outcomes to learning and practice instead. Dr Esther Miedema reflected on how space can be opened up for diversity in research questions and learning, through collaborative projects and diverse teams. Dr Ike Anya provided key questions researchers in global health should ask themselves to reflect on their positionality and role in research. The round table discussion came to a close with a reflection on key priorities for reimagining global health research.
The APH-Global Health junior council hopes this webinar, discussing complex issues in global health research practices, will be the starting point for further conversations and reflections, amongst peers, research groups and institutions and echo Seye Abimbola’s reflection that reimagining global health should be about learning and connecting.