Decolonizing Education: Youth, Knowledge, and Power

Abstract (English)

In an era of profound global transformations, the urgency of rethinking knowledge
production has never been greater. Education has long been a battleground for
competing visions of authority, identity, and power, often serving as an instrument
of epistemic control that marginalizes alternative ways of knowing. However, young
people across the globe are actively challenging these structures, reshaping
educational spaces, and asserting their own epistemologies.
Aligned with the WAU 2025 Congress theme, 'Unearthing Humanity: Critical and
Urgent Epistemic Redefinitions in World Anthropologies', this panel explores how youth
engage in the decolonization of education as a means of dismantling Eurocentric
knowledge systems and fostering inclusive, pluralistic epistemologies. How do
young people resist hegemonic narratives within formal and informal education? In
what ways do they navigate, subvert, or transform institutions that have historically
excluded or misrepresented them? How do Indigenous, postcolonial, and other
marginalized youth reclaim ancestral knowledge and advocate for alternative
learning models?
We invite interdisciplinary perspectives on education as a site of struggle and
transformation, engaging with themes of epistemic justice, decolonizing
methodologies, and collaborative knowledge production. Potential topics include
youth activism in education, the role of language and storytelling in decolonizing
learning, the politics of curriculum reform, and community-driven pedagogies. By
centering the experiences and strategies of young people, this panel highlights
education not just as a mechanism of discipline, but as a space for reimagining
power, identity, and future imaginations.
Ultimately, this discussion moves beyond critiques of exclusion to explore how
youth are creating educational paradigms that reflect their histories, cultures, an
aspirations. Through their voices and actions, what new possibilities emerge for
learning, teaching, and knowing in a world where anthropology itself is being
redefined?