300663 Decolonising Higher Education (MA: Soziologie und Anthropologie der globalen Welt) (S) (WiSe 2026/2027)

Higher education institutions across the globe are undergoing profound transformations. These transformations can be understood at four interconnected levels. First, increasing international student mobility, predominantly from the Global South to the Global North, has reimagined the university as a transnational space where diverse identities, cultures, and epistemologies intersect in the production of knowledge. Second, the neo-liberalization of higher education, which frames education as a commodity, has intensified inequalities in access across regions and social groups. Third, growing heterogeneity in student enrollment across disciplines and institutions has generated new socio-spatial configurations shaped by race, class, caste, and other identity markers. While this heterogenization accommodates historically marginalized groups, it also unsettles and reconfigures entrenched academic hierarchies. Fourth, persistent structural inequalities in access to higher education raise questions about epistemic agency, such as who produces knowledge and whose knowledge is legitimate and recognized. In this course, we bring these four transformations into the center to examine the complexities and contradictions of decolonization in higher education. Drawing on interdisciplinary debates and perspectives, this course explores how decolonial approaches can address these ongoing shifts. Rather than framing decolonization merely as an institutional process, this course foregrounds it as an epistemic and political project, inviting dialogue across intersectional and postcolonial frameworks.