Decolonising Philosophy Toolkit

Earlier this year, a team of academics from the Department of Religions and Philosophies teamed up with four student co-creators over 15 weeks to design and develop a toolkit for decolonising philosophy teaching and assessment at secondary school and university level.

Dr Paul Giladi, Dr Sîan Hawthorne, Dr Elvis Imafidon and Professor Richard King were joined by Aanya Aggarwal (BSc Politics, Philosophy and Economics 2026), Lizi Nzuki (BA International Relations and History 2026), Danae Miserocchi (BA Social Anthropology and World Philosophies 2025), and Lesley Qian (BSc Politics, Philosophy and Economics 2025) under the University’s Co-Creator Internship Programme, which set up 25 internships across areas of SOAS.

SOAS World sat down with Dr Giladi and the student co-creators to discuss how this came about, their experiences of the project, and decolonisation.

What is decolonisation in an academic sense and why is it important?

Lizi: 

Decolonisation means questioning and dismantling the assumed ways of thinking and the ways in which we study and disseminate information, who we study and why, and looking at the methods of study and assessment. Traditionally it’s been centred around Europe and western cultures. Decolonisation looks outside of that and outside of those preconceived notions and assumptions to include a more expansive worldview.

Lesley:

I think in the UK, SOAS is the only university to bring decolonisation to all the curricula over time, not just philosophy. Our curriculum is about diversity and our assessment performance is diverse too, which other universities do not do. Even though we have a lot of room to improve, I hope it can raise awareness to other universities to showcase that this is what can be done and how important it is.

What was the motivation to approach decolonisation with this toolkit? 

Dr Giladi:

Philosophy - as an intellectual discipline in higher education - is very parochial. The Anglo-European tradition has been obsessed with - in the latter part of the 20th century - the conflict between Anglo-American philosophy and continental European thought.

The idea of thinking about philosophy as something outside Europe has never been sufficiently addressed, partly because so much of western philosophy is built on systemic exclusion of African, Asian and Middle Eastern voices.

I wanted to work with students as partners in enquiry. I wanted students to have an opportunity to do something meaningful, creative, and deeply personal that they could get paid for doing.

Through the Co-creator Internship Scheme, I sketched a project to my colleagues Dr Elvis Imafidon, Dr Sîan Hawthorne and Professor Richard King, where each academic would work alongside a student intern, open to everyone at SOAS, not just philosophy students.

It’s important to have different perspectives, not just for interdisciplinary affinities, but because it’s important for philosophers to see that people working in the social sciences make significant contributions. Philosophers are often reluctant to address embodiment and embeddedness, which other social sciences do. You can’t do sociology thinking of yourself as a genderless, non-racialised, non-sexualised entity, but so much of philosophy is built on the abstract self of the thinker, the Cartesian subject – ‘I think’, and that’s rubbish.

Both the toolkit and the handbook are impressive scholarly achievements and that’s because of the students.

How did the collaboration work?

Lizi:

There were four sections of the toolkit and a professor and an intern to each one. I was paired with Dr Sîan Hawthorne and it was a great experience. We had regular contact – an open flow of communication. There was an immense amount of trust coupled with guidance. It was the most I’ve ever been trusted to work independently and it was incredible to experience, especially in my first year at university.

There were channels of support between the interns as well. Even though we were working on different topics there was discussion about methods and how much we were writing. The collaboration came down to the excellent communication that was happening between all of us.

Lesley:

I worked with Dr Giladi on decolonising assessment. We met regularly and I reported about what I’d done each week. We began with research and preparation looking at other university assessment formats and background. We then had discussions about what we wanted to add, and finally we checked and proofread everything to ensure we got what we wanted.

All four interns had a really close mentorship, and it felt like there were always other people working with me. It was a really good experience.

Dr Giladi:

There was a core element of trust, which permeated everything. The four staff modelled the framework of the toolkit structure: the general discourse about (de)coloniality, critical pedagogy in practice, decolonising assessment, and an example of a traditional vs a decolonised module in philosophy. We then shared this with the students and asked them if they thought it was a good structure. This wasn’t a leading question: it was clear that if they didn’t think this was the way forward, modelling the framework would start again and we collectively would work until we got parity.

Once we’d agreed the framework, Lesley wanted to work on assessment, Danae wanted to work on designing a module, Lizi wanted to work on critical pedagogy and critiquing whiteness, and Aanya wanted to work on the framing discourse itself. It was all very organic.

In the larger version of the scholarly output we produced – the handbook – we detailed quantitative data about the amount of black professors compared with white professors in academia, and the racialised degree award gap in UK Higher Education. Crucially, we also looked at qualitative feedback. It is vital people understand testimonial injustices, such as testimonial smothering and silencing. Lizi did a great job focusing on the pathologies of silence and whiteness, since coloniality still lives and breathes right now.

Danae:

We had an amazing team. I got to meet my co-interns who were all passionate about what we were doing. There was a lot of self-reflection and I learnt about how I think and how I’ve been taught philosophy. It was a learning process, almost like writing in a diary, where you put out your feelings, then you read them through – this was good for me to learn both as a philosophy student and as a human being that’s part of this world.

Aanya:

It was well-organised, there was no stage where I wondered what I was doing. I learnt so much. I enjoyed the research and it helped me with my academic studies. I wrote about decolonial epistemologies: I'd done so much research that it helped me to understand my modules at SOAS better.

I worked with Richard King on the framework of decolonising philosophy, about real inclusion versus performative inclusion: just because someone is of colour, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they bring a diverse perspective with them, because they may have been brought up in a western style of learning; just because you're from a certain place, that doesn't necessitate that you bring a diverse perspective.

What has been the reaction to the toolkit?

Lizi: 

It’s been received well. SOAS is built on an educational and moral drive that strives for decolonial learning, to reconcile with uncomfortable pasts, and to prepare us better for our future.

It's generated interesting conversations with staff asking about our work on the toolkit, how that's impacted our learning, and how we would like to see that applied in the future.

Dr Giladi: 

The toolkit is something people can use. It ends with an example of a traditional module and a decolonial module. I’ve had emails from colleagues outside SOAS saying ‘I know now how to structure a decolonial epistemology module’ so it’s had an impact.

There’s been a fair amount of press reaction. The Telegraph and The Times were really keen, I think because it’s taking a reasonable position: saying that philosophy is not just confined to Western Europe is not exactly a groundbreakingly original claim; yet, for some, it is a deeply controversial attitude.

There’s been support in progressive circles of philosophy: the Society for Women in Philosophy’s Ireland branch, which is known for sophisticated intersectional feminist positions, fully endorsed it and has encouraged its mailing list subscribers to use it.

The Quality Assurance Agency have looked at it favourably as a resource for thinking about diversity, equity and inclusion in the Subject Benchmark Statement for philosophy. We've had an offer from Northeastern University to collaborate on summer school masterclasses on decolonial approaches to philosophy.

To have these gains within a few months is a very good thing.

What’s next for decolonisation and what will you take from the experience? 

Aanya:

After the project, I spoke to my community, my family and family friends, who come from colonised areas. They hadn't considered that education could be colonised, even coming from a place that suffered from colonisation. My parents talked about how they struggled with certain aspects when we moved to the UK, and they didn't realise how so much in the world is actually colonised. For me, that’s what decolonising education and philosophy was: practical applications, not just theoretical and academic conversation.

Lesley:

I enjoyed a lot of the research and looking at different university assessments. I found that in many cases, they didn't do anything about non-western philosophy. I found this a really interesting and intellectual process. I am much clearer about what I want to do in the future and my research passions and interests. I will continue to work on decolonisation and on comparative philosophy.

Lizi:

Decolonising has been - especially in education - an advocacy pursuit of mine, and one that predated joining this internship. I’ve had experience in schools fighting for the expansion of decolonisation in curricula.

Even though this is something that I was quite well versed in, I did take away a lot. I'd never considered assessments and how those are laid out. No matter how much time we spend in a field and how passionate you are, there can be blind spots. Even though I come from cultures that rely on oral traditions and different ways of knowledge keeping and storytelling, because I like writing, that's a blind spot for me.

Everything's a learning experience and there's always room for people to grow. That encompasses what decolonising is: it's growth, it's looking to our past and realising that we can be better and do better, and you need to make room for that.

Dr Giladi:

I would like to see more examples produced of traditional philosophy of science contrasted with decolonial philosophy of science, traditional metaphysics contrasted with decolonial metaphysics, etc. 

On a more radical level – as if what we have done isn’t radical enough – the ultimate goal is to improve secondary education in the country. The A-level philosophy curriculum is frankly an abomination: there are no women of colour; there is a sprinkling of white, bourgeois women; and there appears to be only one passing mention of a man of colour. That's not the teachers’ fault, that's a fault with educational policy.

I want to see secondary school teachers working in A-level Philosophy read and talk about the toolkit and build momentum for a bottom up, grassroots level change of the A-level curriculum. I want to see the practice of co-creation, authentic assessment and decolonisation as the new normal. This isn’t controversial: that’s what good education is and should be.

There are ways in which the toolkit can have an impact beyond academia. It can go into other institutional spaces. I would encourage alumni to read over the handbook to see how to work in line with genuinely inclusive practice.

You can find the Decolonising Philosophy Toolkit here.

You can watch Lizi, Aanya and Lesley talk about their experience working on the toolkit here.