Knowledge Dependencies and the Un/Making of Equitable Futures

How do knowledge dependencies shape practices of future-making – and how might we (re)imagine more equitable futures? These questions were at the heart of a two-day academic conference organised by IDOS in collaboration with our partners at the Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies (BCDSS).

The conference brought together forty researchers from around the world and across academic disciplines as well as activist, artistic and museum practice to understand, systematise and critique knowledge dependencies with a view to their transformation towards making equitable futures.

IDOS researcher Dr Niklas Wagner convened and chaired the workshop and panel on “Decolonizing Knowledge within Institutions: Achievements, Barriers, and Collective Learning”, to which colleagues Katharina Molitor and Sarah-Lea Effert also contributed from their perspectives as part of the IDOS Decolonise Group and from efforts at the institute to advance IDOS’s approach to work in equitable partnerships. Dennis Schüpf contributed to the panel on “Unequal Geographies of Knowledge, Power, and Development in a Climate-changed Future” with his research on “Adapting to Uncertainty: Knowing Climate in Unpredictable Seas”, and Saymore Ngoni Kativu delivered a presentation on “Making Futures with Past Mistakes – The Mutant Resurgence of the Green Revolution in Africa” as part of the session on “Narrating the Planet: Technonatures of Knowledge Dependencies”. Further highlights of the conference included three keynote presentations by Margarita Gómez, Dr Lisa Tilley and Prof. AbdouMaliq Simone, a praxis workshop on embodied knowledge, as well as interdisciplinary panels on contesting institutions of exclusion, curating authority, and epistemic futures from the margins.

In her opening and closing remarks, Prof. Anna-Katharina Hornidge emphasised the power of everyday future-making practice amidst global turmoil and relations of dependency, highlighted across the different presentations. The conference marked an important milestone in advancing the institutional cooperation between the BCDSS and IDOS and building networks and partnerships beyond.