Editorial: Epistemic (in)justice in higher education publishing

Abstract

In a post-colonial age of persistent and sometimes pernicious change in higher education contexts and with increasing pressure for academics to demonstrate impact beyond their immediate spheres of teaching, critical perspectives on the dissemination of research is paramount. As individuals who are impacted by institutional structure and can impact on institutional structure, all practitioners and researchers are required to critically appraise their positionality and agency in higher education teaching and learning research. This includes reflecting on epistemic (in)justice, i.e. how their research activities feed into current power structures that determine whose knowledge counts and whose voices, ideas and perspectives are marginalised. Concurrently, all stakeholders involved in the publication process need to reflect on how the knowledge, or indeed, knowledges, that we prioritise either continue to colonise or decolonise the research field. Rather than only focusing on what we have added to the field, at all stages of the publication process, we need to question how this has possibly come at the expense of other equally valid but marginalised ways of doing and being.