Sociological Review Annual Lecture 2019: Decolonising Methodologies, 20 Yrs On: Linda Tuhiwai Smith

On 16th October 2019, The Sociological Review were pleased to host our fifth annual lecture at Goldsmiths, University of London. Previous annual lectures, from Imogen Tyler, Satnam Virdee, Éric Fassin and Rivke Jaffe, have aimed to sociologically intervene in major economic and political changes in the world. In so doing, the annual lecture series enacts The Sociological Review’s manifesto commitment to critically and creatively engage with global struggles and transformations.

In 2019, the editorial board invited Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Professor in the Department of Maori and Indigenous Studies at the University of Waikato. The address came twenty years after the first publication of her ground-breaking book Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. In her opening remarks, editor in chief Micheala Benson noted that the book remains ‘fresh and relevant’ and that Smith’s work critiquing the hegemony as its reproduced through theory, knowledge and research is as important as it ever was.

Smith spoke to the title ‘Decolonising Methodologies, 20 Years On’, reflecting on how the book’s themes resonate in the contemporary academy, as well as what would be included in the book were it to have been written today. Smith opened with a poem, ‘Research Ethics and Indigenous Peoples 101’, which set the scene for a creative and urgent lecture on indigenous knowledges, and decolonisation struggles in all their intersecting forms.