The aim is to discuss research projects dealing with the Caribbean or its diaspora from a reflexive perspective.
The call for critical knowledge production is on the rise once again in various research areas, including: naming policies, literary representation, climate change, and forced migration. Although the “decolonial option” was promoted as early as in the 1990s in the Americas and the Caribbean, in order to liberate knowledge from the colonial matrix of power, it has only found its way into hegemony-oriented scholarship during the last decade. However, it has been observed that researchers and academic institutions enmeshed in coloniality tend to use the label “decolonial” more as a metaphor, while they continue to recognize only certain knowledges and methodologies.
This junior conference is explicitly addressed to doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers of linguistics and literature, history and the social sciences, arts and cultural studies, and those working beyond or between these fields of knowledge. The broader aim is to facilitate a small, discussion-focused, and collegial conference that explores how power, knowledge, and positionality are negotiated in Caribbean studies research through researchers’ specific projects. On all conference days, there will be keynotes or round table discussions that provide insights
into current debates in individual disciplines and topics. After the conference, a publication is planned, open to all interested participants.