Decolonising the Latin American universities
- Alma Maldonado, Departamento de Investigaciones Educativas (DIE)-CINVESTAV
- Carolina Guzmán Valenzuela, Universidad de Tarapaca
- Gunther Dietz, Universidad Veracruzana
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Latin America has experienced a long story of colonialism. In the sixteenth century, the lands were colonised by Portugal and Spain. Afterwards, the souls, the bodies and the minds were domesticated by the Catholic church and European ways of conceiving the world. By the time that Latin American former colonies gained their independence (between the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries) the mestizos (a mix between European and indigenous ancestries) have become the largest population across the region.
The Latin American region has been subject to the economic, political and cultural power of countries in the Global North (and especially the USA), and higher education is no exception. Latin American universities depend on science and technology produced in countries in the North as well as on research aid, investment, and doctoral formation. Also, Latin American universities have become overly dependent on a global model of university that heavily relies on prestige and academic productivity.
In this context, questions about whether it is possible to decolonise Latin American universities emerge. In this seminar, issues about internationalisation, global rankings and the decolonisation of universities in the global South, with a specific focus on Latin America will be addressed:
Dr Alma Maldonado will present: ‘Decolonializing the colonial university model: an impossible mission?’
Professor Dr Carolina Guzman-Valenzuela will present ‘Decoloniality of power and universities in Latin America’
And Dr Gunther Diez will present ‘The Decolonial Potential of Intercultural Higher Education in Mexico’
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Alma Maldonado earned her Ph.D. at the Boston College’s Center for International Higher Education in the U.S. From 2004 to 2009 Maldonado was an Assistant Professor at the Center for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Arizona. Since 2010 she is a researcher at the Departamento de Investigaciones Educativas (DIE)-CINVESTAV in Mexico City. Her research focuses on comparative policies in higher education (in particular in Latin America), globalization, academic mobility and international organizations.
Carolina Guzmán Valenzuela works at the Faculty of Education, Universidad de Tarapaca, Chile. Her research focuses on neoliberalism and its impact on universities, the public/private distinction in higher education, and the North-South divide and its influence on the construction of knowledge.
Gunther Dietz grew up in southern Chile and in northern Germany. He studied anthropology, philosophy and philology in the Universities of Göttingen and Hamburg. He holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. in anthropology from Hamburg University. He has been teaching at the Universities of Hamburg, Granada (Spain), Ghent (Belgium), Aalborg (Denmark), Veracruz (Mexico) and Deusto (Spain). Currently he is a research professor in Intercultural Studies at Universidad Veracruzana in Xalapa (Mexico), where he works on multiculturalism, ethnicity, interculturality and intercultural / inter-religious education. His current project “Indigeneity and Pathways through Higher Education in Mexico” is carried out jointly by the University of Bath (UK), by UNAM and Universidad Veracruzana.
