Convened by Richard Hemraj Toppo and Gert Van Hecken, Institute of Development Policy (IOB), University of Antwerp

The developmental studies discipline and the developmental sector in general are often accused of carrying forward colonial legacies and have evoked anti-colonial sentiments. This panel is dedicated to highlighting the colonial ecologies of one of the prominent sites of development i.e., ‘universities’, and sustaining the different forms of resistance against the colonial ecology of the university spaces. Universities have traditionally been the centres of generating and re-producing, what Gramsci terms as “the hegemony of the dominant”. These hegemonic influences, on the one hand, discipline university members, students and staff alike, to singularly curate their imaginations and understandings in line with the colonial logic of the world. On the other hand, these hegemonic influences also define the alienation of multiple struggles – where, for instance, ecological crises are seen as separate from the social-political struggles. Resultantly, universities develop a colonial ecology of their own, defined by the suppression and silencing of any dissenting voice that seeks to imagine a decolonial future. Against such domination, students and staff from universities across the globe have, on several occasions, risen together and expressed solidarity on issues of global significance. Some of the prominent examples have been the cross-university solidarity platforms against the fossil fuel industry, or the global student solidarity platform against racism or sexism. In the recent times, there have been widespread solidarity movements across universities in support of Palestinian rights and against Israel’s illegal occupation, sustained apartheid and genocide in Gaza and across the rest of Palestine; in several cases, universities have attempted to violently suppress such movements. This panel seeks to examine and understand the dynamics of such colonial ecologies of universities and how such spaces have been confronted and challenged by student/staff activism. This panel invites contributions that brings forth the experiences from universities.