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Decolonising QMU: Decolonising research

This guide aims to provide resources to support your decolonising journey. Feel free to recommend resources by emailing Ileana Thomson

What can you do to decolonise your research?

  • Change your mind set. To decolonise education and research, we first must change our westernised mindset which does not recognise that knowledge from other cultures has value or that sometimes western knowledge is not always valid or works in other contexts. We must recognise that we do not have enough awareness of what we are missing from non-western cultures to enable us to have a holistic understanding of the world, and that we must be open to discovering knowledge without placing it into hierarchies.
  • Use databases and resources that index Global South research publications. When searching for literature for research and teaching, it is important to include the previously excluded or marginalised voices. This means not only having a good command of advanced academic database search techniques but also being aware that they do not contain all knowledge. Searching beyond them, using the repositories below that index research from across the world (either fully or partially Open Access) can help you discover more.
  • Use advanced web searching techniques to find grey literature that may not have been included in databases. If you need training on either database or grey literature/advance internet searching technique, please attend our workshops or contact your Liaison Librarian.
  • Collaborate with international colleagues especially from former colonies or the Global South in your research projects in order to engage with a wide variety of knowledge ecologies.  It is important to be aware of the existence of oral traditions of passing knowledge that have existed for hundreds or thousands of years in many previously colonised populations (including Europe).  Some of this knowledge is starting to appear in writing due to efforts of Global South authors.
  • Be aware of the biases listed below when researching or searching for literature. 
  • For further decolonising research resources, please see the Decolonising Research section within our reading list on decolonising.

Databases/sources that include Global South publications (free or partly free)

Bias in publishing, discoverability, literature searching, AI and search engines

Catalogue of Bias

Publishing Industry Biases

Journal rankings biases are based on incomplete data. They can be and are manipulated. They cannot be a measure of the quality of any article. 

Reviewer biases of mainstream scientific publications against Global South papers of equivalent quality to a Global North journal.

Editor selection for publication biases based on, for example, lack of English "proficiency".

Coverage biases: selection of journal to be indexed in mainstream scientific databases based on colonialist practices e.g. English language journal home page, citedness of journal articles in SCOPUS​, academic contribution to the field.

Research biases

Searching biases: using only mainstream academic databases or resources, not including searching via search engines for grey literature and excluding Global South databases and resources.

Selection biases: selecting only western authors, well known authors being cited more ("hallo effect").

Citation biases: selecting most cited papers for example or papers from high ranking journals.

Search Engine and Gen AI Algorithm Biases

Racism, sexism and fascism

How AI reduces the world to stereotypes

Rest of World analysed 3,000 AI images to see how image generators visualize different countries and cultures

Google, Microsoft, and Perplexity Are Promoting Scientific Racism in Search Results

Algorithms of Oppression : How Search Engines Reinforce Racism by Safiya Noble

Musk’s AI bot Grok blames ‘programming error’ for its Holocaust denial - Grok doubted 6 million death toll, days after peddling conspiracy theory of ‘white genocide’ in South Africa