Description

9h30-11h30         TALK - Where we are: institutional memory, epistemic decolonization, and the politics of education

This talk invites participants into a critical and reflective conversation on the colonial roots and present-day legacies of Belgian institutions and beyond — from museums and universities to public spaces. Centred in lived experience, critical pedagogy, and epistemological critique, Lehasa Moloi and François Makanga will explore how coloniality continues to shape the spaces we teach and learn in today.

Bringing together voices from Belgium and South Africa, the seminar will address questions such as: How do institutions like the Africa Museum and Ghent University continue to reproduce colonial logics? What role can decolonial pedagogical tools play in confronting historical silences? What does it mean to teach for social justice in a system still rooted in capitalist and imperial epistemologies? How can African knowledge systems (e.g., Ubuntu, circular learning) inform the future of education?

Rather than rushing toward solutions, this seminar invites to locate ourselves in the place and asks: Where are we now? What do we need to see, remember, and unlearn when imagining what comes next?

The conversation will be moderated by Johanna Couvée, PhD candidate at the research group Culture and Education.

Dr Lehasa Moloi is an Afrocentric scholar grounded in Afrocentricity. He is a senior lecturer in Development Studies at the University of South Africa. He holds a PhD in Development Studies and focuses on epistemic decolonization and the pursuit of re-humanization in the Global South, with a particular emphasis on Africa, against the ravages of the colonial past. His work, rooted in Afrocentricity as a liberatory framework, opposes the epistemicides created by European colonialism. He writes broadly on Africa, knowledge, development, and decolonization, and is the author of Developing Africa? New Horizons with Afrocentricity (2024), which critiques the limits of Eurocentric thinking in African development discourse.

François Makanga is a Brussels-based artivist, decolonial guide-lecturer at the Africa Museum, Bozar, Kanal Centre Pompidou and CIVA, and member of the Bamko-cran collective. He is also a cultural activist who combines convergence and awareness of decolonial issues in European artistic creation.

After the talk you can join the KICK-OFF of the first Feminist Lunch Tour (12h – 13h in the same space, bring your own lunch, no registration needed).

The idea of the Lunch Tour is to build and strengthen the UGent Feminist Network by moving across different campuses: connecting with people, understanding their needs, and creating collective strategies to push for a feminist university. 

13h30-16h30         WORKSHOP - Moving within and with the body: embodiment as response to epistemic injustice

This workshop invites participants to pause and ask: What happens when we bring the body into our research and pedagogical practices?

Rooted in the awareness that colonial legacies continue to shape what is considered valid knowledge, and by whom and how it is produced, this workshop session moves beyond institutional norms that often favour detachment and ‘objectivity’. Together, we’ll explore how embodiment brings our body in connection with ourselves and the realities we are part of, allowing for new ways of learning and accountability. Through movement and collective reflection, we will engage with the body as a site of knowledge, relation, and critical agency.

This workshop will be guided by Massinda Zinga. Artist, embodied researcher, artivist, and keeper of living memories.

“My work is rooted in black cultures, more specifically Afro-Caribbean ones, where bodies tell stories, where dance becomes language, where movement heals and transforms. Through artistic creation, dance, research, carnival, education, and community building, I create spaces where healing, joy, and resistance come together. I believe in art as a tool for transformation, in community as a place of power, and in culture as both memory and future.

My creative & sacred work is a bridge:
between the ancestral and the contemporary,
between the individual and the collective,
between the pain of the past and the strength of healing.”

Entering this shared space of learning together, we ask you to be mindful and intentional about the following principles:

- to be open to practice, not to perfect: We’re not seeking polished outcomes, but opening up to a living, unfolding process.
- to share emotional labour and discomfort, especially if you are not used to being asked to be uncomfortable.
- to move up / move back: we encourage full participation by all present. Notice who is speaking and who is not. If you tend to speak often, consider “moving back” and vice versa.