Objectivity in Research: From Eurocentrism via Decolonisation to Transmodernity

Abstract

By the end of the 1960s, most colonies had become independent nations. However, the resulting changes in the world order have done little to modify the ‘colonial’ attitudes of universities in the Western world. This article is a personal, reflexive account of an India-born doctoral researcher in Belgium. Like universities around the world, KU Leuven, the university where the author conducted her research, plays a key role in what Michel Rolph Troulliot calls ‘the production of history’. Hired by the Department of History to research the role of missionaries in education in independent India, she discusses her struggle to decolonise ‘knowledge production’ – not only due to the university’s Eurocentrism during the pandemic, but also because of the ivory tower approach that the author had to take towards her research.