Description
Bridging Academia in the Global North and South: Challenges and Opportunities
Maria Kardashevskaya (a Research Associate at the University of Manitoba, Canada) & Agus Heru Setiawan (Assistant Professor at the Indonesian Art Institute at Surakarta)
We are researchers who find ourselves to be in two related but separate worlds: Global North and Global South. We are writing from the perspective of the Global South academics who find themselves in a situation where they are required to contribute to Scopus and Web of Science-indexed academic journals.
We are specifically writing about the situation in Indonesia but tackle the issues of decolonisation of knowledge creation and sharing processes. We argue that the agenda of decolonisation needs to be inclusive of discussions against neoliberalism within higher education. We also argue that to decolonise knowledge creation and exchange processes, the academic knowledge creation should aim to transform itself into a community of knowledge creators that are connected transnationally in loose and closely-knit global networks that allow for flexibility, acceptance, and a transdisciplinary and transnational dialogue between the Global North and the Global South.
This process then can potentially support the development of a national-level monolingual community of knowledge creators and sharers. And, in this way, transform the way national agencies assess their academics. For example, instead of putting funds into Scopus-indexed journals, they can put these funds into the creation of these small and numerous but well-connected knowledge creation communities that do not necessarily need to be bound to the English-speaking world.
