Decolonial Voices, Language and Race

In the wake of #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, #rhodesmustfall and the Covid-19 pandemic, this groundbreaking book echoes the growing demand for decolonization of the production and dissemination of academic knowledge. Reflecting the dynamic and collaborative nature of online discussion, this conversational book features interviews with globally-renowned scholars working on language and race and the interactive discussion that followed and accompanied these interviews. Participants address issues including decoloniality; the interface of language, development and higher education; race and ethnicity in the justice system; lateral thinking and the intellectual history of linguistics; and race and gender in a biopolitics of knowledge production. Their discussion crosses disciplinary boundaries and is a vital step towards fracturing racialized and gendered epistemic systems and creating a decolonized academia.

Sinfree Makoni is Director of African Studies, Liberal Arts Professor of African Studies and Applied Linguistics, The Pennsylvania State University, USA.

Magda Madany-Saá is a PhD Candidate in Curriculum & Instruction in the College of Education, and a TESL Instructor at The Pennsylvania State University, USA. Her research interests include decolonial theory and methodology, critical interculturality, language policy and translingualism. She has experience teaching Spanish in Poland and English in Ecuador, as well as training in-service English teachers in Latin America.

Bassey E. Antia is Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. His teaching and/or research interests span multilingualism (in higher education), language policy, terminology and decolonial approaches to sociolinguistics. He is co-editor with Sinfree Makoni of Southernizing Sociolinguistics: Colonialism, Racism and Patriarchy in Language in the Global South (Routledge, 2023).

Rafael Lomeu Gomes is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at MultiLing - Center for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan in the Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies, University of Oslo, Norway. His research interests include multilingualism, social theory, immigration, digitally-mediated communication, and media discourses.