CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS article
Front. Sociol.
Sec. Race and Ethnicity
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2025.1554679
This article is part of the Research TopicReimagining Futures: Decoloniality in Higher Education – An Ubuntu PerspectiveView all 7 articles
Decolonising against a backdrop of colonial amnesia: Barriers, challenges, and finding a way forward
Provisionally accepted
- Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, London, United Kingdom
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This paper, originally delivered as a keynote at De Montfort University, interrogates the persistence of colonial amnesia within educational, institutional, and cultural contexts in the UK. Through an autoethnographic lens, it explores both structural and embodied barriers to meaningful decolonisation, drawing attention to the epistemic violence of historical erasure alongside the deeply personal labour of self-decolonisation. Combining conceptual critique with situated narrative, the paper presents three autoethnographic vignettes that examine naming, diasporic dissonance, and joy as a mode of refusal. It argues for a dual praxis that foregrounds structural transformation while simultaneously centring introspective reclamation. The analysis ultimately underscores the need for healing, justice, and historical redress within ongoing struggles for equity and recognition.
Keywords: decolonisation, colonial amnesia, Whiteness Ecology Theory, Eurocentrism, Self-Decolonisation, Autoethnography, structural transformation
Received: 02 Jan 2025; Accepted: 24 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Shah. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Javeria Khadija Shah, Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, London, United Kingdom
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