Southern Researchers and the Politics of Knowledge Production Narrating from the Margins

Introduction

1. Centering the South: On Fieldwork, Positionality, and Epistemic Justice

Ahmed El Assal, Yasmine Hafez, and Ilaha Abasli

Part I:  Researching “Home”

2. Researching Home: Resisting/Re-Existing Epistemic Erasures

Tamara Soukotta and Venan Haryanto

3. Where are you from, and why do you care? – Duo-Ethnographic Reflections on Researching Urban India

Anna Elias and Aila Bandagi Kandlakunta

4. Bearing Witness at Home: A Personal and Academic Exploration of South Lebanon’s Internally Displaced

Jasmin Lilian Diab

5. Deconstructing Home: Positionality and the Politics of Belonging

Fizza Batool and Huda Javaid

6. Finding Hope in Research: Reflections of a Scholar-Activist in Indonesia

Marwa Marwa

Part II: Beyond Insider–Outsider Dichotomies

7. Practicing Positionality: Ethics, Power and Co-Creation in Interdisciplinary Research

Osei Davina, Thrivikraman Jyothi, Donkor Winfried, Bagade Sadhna, Twum Owusu Kwaku, and Benson-Atiglah Pascal

8. When the “Muzungu” is not white: Navigating Expectations in (and after) Fieldwork 

Divin-Luc Bikubanya

9. Les Jeunes Filles: Positionality and Reflectivity as Cross-Cultural Researchers in West Africa  

Semhar Haile, Ndèye Sokhna Dieng, and Ambre Alfredo

10. Access, Ethics, and Otherness in Laos: Reflections on Fieldwork as a Chinese Researcher

Zhiqiang Zheng

11. Whose Priorities Count? Environmental Research at the Crossroads of Community Needs, State, and Global Agendas

Ahmed Eladawy and Saker El Nour

Part III: Identity and the Politics of Knowledge Production

12. Positionality, Power, and Participation in Knowledge Production: An Auto-Ethnography of Research on Transactional Sex in Humanitarian Contexts

Inés Cubides Kovacsics

13. Positional Vertigo: Embodied Affects of Settler Colonialism in Kazakhstan

Altynay Kambekova

14. Navigating Positionality and Power Dynamics: Fieldwork Challenges for Iranian Researchers in Development Studies

Asma Mehan

15. Geographies of Identities: Reflexive Positionality of a Perceived Arab Researcher in Kurdistan

Sali Hafez

16. From Fieldwork to Academia: Challenges and Privileges of Decolonial Research as an Early Career Researcher

Jorge A. Ruiz Zevallos

17. Specters of Silence – Ethical Listening and Discursive Practice in Fieldwork: Notes from Colombia

Juliana Forigua-Sandoval

Part IV: Emotional Labor and Embodied Experience

18. Reflections from/on the Flood: Transnational Grief, Disaster Management, and the Unequal Distribution of the Future

Matheus Gobbato Leichtweis and Luísa Calvete Portela Barbosa

19. Feeling the Field: Emotional Labour and the Gendered Terrain of Research

Norin Taj

20. Through the Eyes of Nation: The Refugee Gaze, Turkish Nationalism and Politics of Othering

Basma Taysir Al Doukhi

21. Exile, Evidence, and Resistance: Fieldwork Among Vulnerable Populations in Post-Coup Myanmar

Tin Maung Htwe

Part V: Epistemic Justice and Reversing the Gaze

22. Where the Body Stands: Negotiating Researcher Positionality across Institutionalized Terrains

Mariana Morais

23. Exploring the “Northern” field(s): A Brazilian’s Reflexivity from Down Under

Maria Teresa Braga Bizarria

24. Epistemological Refusal: A Palestinian Researcher’s Reflections Amid the Gaza Genocide

Haya AlFarra

25. Engaging Epistemologies ‘Otherwise’: A Decolonial Collaborative Research with Pakistani Migrant Women in the Netherlands

Umbreen Salim

26. Situating the “South” in Global South: Reflexivity and Epistemic Justice in Southeast Asian Environmental Development

Joseph Edward B. Alegado and Justin Chun-Him Lau

Biography

Ilaha Abasli is a PhD researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences, Erasmus University Rotterdam, specializing in circular economy, political ecology, and environmental justice. Her research critically examines the intersection of socio-economic processes and material flows within circular economy interventions, with particular emphasis on environmental justice concerns in the Global South.

Ahmed El Assal is a visiting researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands, specializing in governance, public policy, and political economy. He has recently completed his PhD in International Development through a joint doctorate between Erasmus University Rotterdam and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in the Netherlands. His research focuses on critical social policy in Africa, civil society and accountability, political economy of development, and Southern epistemologies

Yasmine Hafez has recently completed her PhD at SOAS, University of London, and is a Fellow at the Water Diplomacy Center at Jordan University of Science and Technology. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork across the Nile Basin and extensive archival research, her work examines power dynamics in water management and traces the long-term political, social, and ecological processes shaping water governance and environmental justice.

"A nicely weaved body knowledge volume, advancing critical debates on what knowledge counts and contested epistemic approaches while underscoring the contradictions of academic freedom and scholars at risk. Illustrates dynamism in epistemics, positionalities, nationalities, centring researcher voices and complexities transcending knowledge frontiers." 

Shuaib Lwasa, Professor, International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands.

"A compelling and timely volume that powerfully foregrounds Global South scholars’ lived experiences, this book rethinks fieldwork, positionality, and knowledge production as deeply political and relational practices. It is an essential contribution to debates on epistemic justice and decolonial research methodologies."

Lakshmi Priya Rajendran, Associate Professor, The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, United Kingdom.

"This book is a timely, much needed, well argued and cogent set of analysis and reflections on the creation of knowledge itself. In a time of severe misinformation, continued colonial domination of ‘truth’ and manipulated narrations of self and other, this is a strategic initiative, and a must-read for our shared humanity."

Azza Karam, Professor, Director of Kahane UN Program, Occidental College, United States.

"With honest and sharp first-hand accounts of scholars from the majority world, this book shows that ethical research is anything but institutional compliance. Highly recommended for anyone involved in knowledge production, directly or indirectly."

Zeynep Kaşlı, Assistant Professor, International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands.

 

"This in-depth work by a group of distinguished young scholars and academics presents a new dynamic of engagement, contribution and responses to challenges in the field of development studies from the Global South perspective. This work provides a distinguished example and space for cooperation among young experts from different academic backgrounds, cultures and contexts. This work will serve a genuine reference for scholars across the globe in the field of development studies."

Ibrahim Natil, Professor (Assoc), Council member of Development Studies Association- UK & Research Fellow of DCU Conflict Institute, Dublin City University, Ireland.