co2libri

As postcolonial, decolonial, and other critics have long argued, the dominance of conceptual and institutional Eurocentrism in global academia and knowledge production needs to be overcome. However, progress on this front has been slow. Indeed, the larger project of rewriting the humanities and social sciences by integrating key references and contributors from the global South (and minority perspectives in the North) has only just begun. The pathway there consists in collaborative efforts, seeking to move beyond the dichotomies of north/south and center/periphery by exploring the generative possibilities of genuine ‘conceptual collaboration’. This refers to foundational dialogical engagements which require diverse kinds of disciplinary, linguistic, and regional expertise.
This project assembles an interdisciplinary, transregional-oriented group of BUA- and Berlin based researchers, who have already long pursued an inclusive and pluralizing intellectual agenda alongside their academic partners in many world regions. Some of us have come to Berlin from the South. Building on these experiences, we seek to contribute to the project of decentering and decolonizing the social sciences and humanities and diversifying their starting points.
Moreover, different political developments, such as funding cuts for critical scholarship, a rise in (neo)populism and authoritarianism, growing mistrust in science and governments, have threatened academic freedom in many places. There is an urgent need to create inclusive spaces and collaborative formats that enable dialogue and mutual exchange between academics, critical thinkers and activists based in the global North and South.
“co2libri: conceptual collaboration – living borderless research interaction”
The name of our initiative underscores that conceptual collaboration stands for our foundational dialogical approach. In this way, co2libri pursues three main objectives: a) reconsider/rethink theory (in terms of alternative conceptual frameworks and baselines), b) develop and cultivate visions of more fair and adequate research practices globally in the light of southern perspectives, and c) explore the potentials of genuine conceptual collaboration across disciplines, locations and positionalities.