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Decolonization: Promises, Problems, Practices
Annual Conference of the Institute for Cultural Studies (IKW), Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna | 8–9 October 2026
I convened the annual conference of the Institute for Cultural Studies (IKW) at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, together with Johannes Feichtinger (Austrian Academy of Sciences) and Nicole Immler (University of Humanistic Studies, Utrecht).
Bringing together scholars working across different geographical, historical, and disciplinary contexts, the conference examined the promises, problems, and practices of decolonization. At a time when decolonization has become a prominent term in academic debate, the conference asked what the concept means, how its boundaries might be reassessed, and what it demands of research practices and institutions.
The discussions pursued three main objectives: to reconsider the historical and geographical boundaries of decolonization and explore its postcolonial forms; to bring underexplored narratives into view through critical engagement with archival sources, fieldwork practices, and epistemic reflexivity; and to examine how the shift from decolonization to decoloniality takes shape across different academic and institutional contexts.
The programme addressed the history of the concept, Central Europe as a space for advancing debates on decolonization, the relationship between artistic and research perspectives, the role of state institutions in the decolonization of knowledge, and questions of transformative justice and decolonial reparations. Keynote lectures by Frederick Cooper (New York University) and Kodzo Gavua (University of Ghana), alongside a concluding contribution by A. Dirk Moses (CUNY New York and Central European University), situated these questions within broader historical and contemporary debates.
At its core, the conference addressed a fundamental question: How can debates on decolonization enable us to think about and conduct research differently?
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