Project Details
Projekt
Settler Decolonization in Country/on Land: Rehearsing Collaboration
Subject Area
European and American Literary and Cultural Studies
African, American and Oceania Studies
General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
African, American and Oceania Studies
General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
Term
since 2024
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 496295891
The project pursues a collaborative research design that engages with the theoretical and practical work of decolonization carried out in the settler colonies of Australia as well as the US and Canada (referred to as Turtle Island by many Indigenous scholars and activists). We focus on the ways in which decolonization as an Indigenous-led effort can open up spaces for collaboration with non-Indigenous actors. Our project will (1) study the ways in which such collaborations center L/land as the primary site of Indigenous-settler interaction, tracing how L/land relations assemble potential collaborators, (2) ask how Indigenous-led work on decolonization challenges common notions of 'collaboration', and (3) articulate an understanding of anticolonial and decolonial work that can and must be undertaken in Germany in relation to the two contexts of Australia and Turtle Island. In approaching these research objectives, we (4) develop 'rehearsing' collaboration’ as a potentially transformative methodology of relating to Indigenous work from the positionality of non-Indigenous researchers and collaborators situated outside the settler colony. The Pis will work together with the project’s Indigenous PhD fellows and Mercator Professors to produce a series of co-authored publications in various formats, as well as a research blog. The two PhD fellows will undertake dissertations under cotutelle agreements with Indigenous colleagues in Turtle Island and Australia.
DFG Programme
Research Units
