Concurrences in Postcolonial Research: Perspectives, Methodologies, and Engagements (Beyond the Social Sciences)

The concept of concurrences is a blanket term for challenging dominating statements of the past and present. Concurrent stories have varying claims to reality and fiction, as well as different, diverging, and at times competing claims to society, culture, identity, and historical past. Dominant Western narrations about colonial power relationships are challenged by alternative sources such as heritage objects and oral traditions, enabling the voice of minorities or subaltern groups to be heard. Concurrences in Postcolonial Research is about capturing multiple voices and multiple temporalities. As such, it is both a relational and dynamic methodology and a theoretical perspective that undergirds the multiple workings of power, uncovering asymmetrical power relations. Interdisciplinary in nature, this anthology is the outcome of scholarship from the humanities and social sciences with an interest in the multiple temporality of postcolonial issues and engagements in various places across the world.

Ngambouk Vitalis Pemunta has taught at the Universities of Yaoundé I, Cameroon, Central European University, and University College Dublin, he has recently completed postdoctoral research at the Centre for Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden. He is also a consultant for several NGOs in both his native Cameroon and abroad and is the country of origin expert on asylum representing Cameroon for the United Kingdom-based Rights in Exile Programme.