DSRN Conference

The international conference, “Decolonizing Global Studies: Charting Trends, Mapping Trajectories” is organized by the Decolonial Studies Program of the UP Center for Integrative and Development Studies in partnership with the International Studies Department of Miriam College and the Philippine International Studies Organization. The academic gathering is open to scholars, researchers, students, and practitioners who are interested or engaged in decolonial studies and related fields.

The two-day event will be held on 11-12 September 2020 at the Miriam College in Quezon City, Philippines.

An academic workshop is also being organized to be held on 7-10 September 2020. If you wish to be considered for the workshop, click here.

Important dates

  • 15 May July 2020 – Extended deadline for Submission of Abstracts
  • 15 June 31 July 2020 – Notification of Acceptance
  • 10 August 2020 – Deadline for Registration
  • 20 31 August 2020 – Release of Final Program
  • 11-12 September 2020 – International Conference
CALL FOR PAPERS
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

CLICK HERE
TO SUBMIT AN ABSTRACT

CONCEPT NOTE

The impulse to study the global and the international has brought forth a diversity in approaches, methods, and perspectives. In recent years, there has also been a sustained engagement with Western-oriented assumptions and premises. Grounded on interrogating Western models and theorizing in an attempt to pluralize discourses, scholars have launched critiques and proposed alternatives in nuancing the “global” and “globalization”; modernity and postmodernity; colonial and postcolonial conditions. One such endeavor is seen in a decolonial approach highlighting the need to unpack aspects of Western modernity in postcolonial states through a critical engagement with colonial-era texts, collective memory and the use of both colonial and local languages. This international conference aims to contribute and further the discussions in these expanding fields by charting trends and mapping trajectories in decolonizing global studies. With 2021 marking the 500th year commemoration of the first circumnavigation of the world comes additional impetus in the need to revisit the beginnings and impacts of the cultural encounters that contributed to the contemporary configurations of international affairs on the level of the political, economic, social, cultural, and ideological.

This conference, therefore, also seeks to engage the widest possible range of application of decoloniality to various fields of knowledge not only in the social sciences and humanities. It is maintained that the Western-oriented assumptions and models of apprehending knowledge permeate across contexts and disciplines which are also translated to policies that directly engage the public. Thus, the conference is also open to scholars from the natural sciences and engineering, as well as practitioners in the fields of governance, development work, business and other enterprises.

We invite papers that are theoretical and/or methodological, case studies, or comparative pieces, that touch, but not limited to, the following subthemes:

  • Global, international, and area studies
  • Knowledge production and discourses on the global/international
  • Decolonial methods and theory in the social sciences and humanities
  • Studies on the Global South
  • Local and indigenous knowledge in relation to the global/international
  • Non-Western international relations perspectives
  • Colonial history and postcolonial conditions
  • The Philippines in the Global South
  • Decolonial approaches to knowledge production in the social sciences. arts and humanities, as well as natural science and other fields 
  • Relevance of decoloniality to public policy, legislation, and governance 

TYPES OF PRESENTATIONS

In the interest of diversifying modes of discussions, the conference is open to four types of presentations: 

  • Individual Paper Presentations – individual papers submitted and clustered into panels of similar themes by the conference committee, presented by each author. 
  • Organized Panel Presentations – submission of a set of papers as a group covering a theme; a discussant is optional, but preferred.
  • Roundtable Discussions – submission of a topic for discussion with a set of discussants with a moderator.
  • Open Discussion Sessions – submission of a critical question/topic for discussion to be opened to participants who may wish to join the conversation. It may take the form, for example, of a theoretical or methodological inquiry, research agenda-setting, discussion of a book, sharing of pedagogical techniques, etc. 

Submit your abstracts through the online submission form. Pertinent instructions are indicated. In line with the international conference, an academic workshop will also be held on 7-10 September 2020. If you wish to be considered for the workshop, indicate this on the online form. Note that a full paper of 4,500-6,500 words is required to be submitted for the review of the organizers to determine the final list of participants to the workshop.

SYED FARID ALATAS

Syed Farid Alatas is Professor of Sociology at the National University of Singapore. He is also appointed to the Department of Malay Studies at NUS and headed that department from 2007 till 2013. He lectured at the University of Malaya in the Department of Southeast Asian Studies prior to joining NUS. In the early 1990s, he was a Research Associate at the Women and Human Resource Studies Unit, Science University of Malaysia. Prof. Alatas has authored numerous books and articles, including Ibn Khaldun (Oxford University Press, 2013); Applying Ibn Khaldun: The Recovery of a Lost Tradition in Sociology (Routledge, 2014), and (with Vineeta Sinha) Sociological Theory Beyond the Canon (Palgrave, 2017) and “The State of Feminist Theory in Malaysia” in Maznah Mohamad & Wong Soak Koon, eds., Feminism: Malaysian Reflections and Experience (special issue of Kajian Malaysia: Journal of Malaysian Studies), 12, 1-2 (1994): 25-46. His areas of interest are the sociology of Islam, social theory, religion and reform, intra- and inter-religious dialogue, and the study of Orientalism.

RAMON GUILLERMO

Ramon Guillermo is a professor at the University of the Philippines Diliman Center for International Studies and currently serves as the Faculty Regent of the University of the Philippines. He holds a PhD Southeast Asian Studies from the University of Hamburg. He has widely published on topics pertaining to intellectual history, translation and language studies, Southeast Asian Studies, among others. 

RUFA CAGOCO-GUIAM

Rufa Cagoco‐Guiam has “changed tires”, or retired from Philippine government service as Full Professor III, Sociology Department, College of Social Sciences and Humanities, of the Mindanao State University – General Santos City.  She is a cultural anthropologist by training, both from Silliman University – Dumaguete City, Philippines and from the University of Hawaii for her advanced studies. Prof Guiam has published numerous articles and chapters in books, largely focused on the following topics:  child soldiers, gender and armed conflict, gender and livelihoods among internally displaced communities, peace and development communities, illegal drug trade and its intersections with political violence and armed conflict in Muslim Mindanao; and lately, on transitional justice in the Bangsamoro communities in Mindanao. She is a Senior Asian Public Intellectual (API) Fellow of The Nippon Foundation in 2008-2009 and an Executive Education Grantee of the Institute of Politics, Harvard School of Government, Harvard University, in 2009.  She recently was a visiting scholar at the College of Intercultural Communications, Rikkyo University, Tokyo, Japan in October 2018. Currently, Ms. Guiam is one of the Conveners of the Independent Working on Transitional Justice – Dealing with the Past (TJ – DwP), an offshoot of her two-year engagement as the Lead Coordinator of the Listening Process of the Transitional Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) in the Bangsamoro. The TJRC was part of the Joint Normalization Committee provided for in the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB) signed between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.  She used to do a variety of consultancy work, in particular with the UN Women (mapping of initiatives to prevent Violent Extremism in the Bangsamoro and for the Conciliation Resources, London, for inclusive localized peace platforms; and more recently with the Asia Foundation and the UNICEF for projects providing technical assistance to the new government in the Bangsamoro.  In between her consultancy work, she writes a fortnightly column in the Opinion Page of the Philippine Daily Inquirer (PDI), under Kris-Crossing Mindanao (starting last June 18, 2018). She has just finished fieldwork for her latest research project  – Child Rights Situational Analysis for the children in the new Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) for the Save the Children – Philippines program. Starting November 26, 2019, she has been engaged as the National Gender Equality, Disability and Social Inclusion (GEDSI) Adviser for the Pathways education program for children in the Bangsamoro.  Pathways is a nine-year education program focusing on K-3 basic education funded by the Australian government through its Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). 

Conference ProgrammeDownload