TOPIC: Leading a ‘decolonial turn’ in research methodology from a knowledge and information stewardship perspective

‘Information’ as conceptualized in the discipline of knowledge and information stewardship is not neutral as this discipline increasingly, in the current digital information age, engages historical, cultural, social, economic and political forces that interact with information.

Such forces may use information to advance dominant epistemic agendas and hence the need for researchers, students, practitioners and relevant stakeholders in knowledge and information stewardship and related fields, to critically engage and/or disrupt such forces in their curation of information for use in teaching and learning, research, professional practice, theory development, policy application, etc.

The knowledge and information stewardship discipline is very engaged in Africa, particularly in current artificial intelligence and the Fourth Industrial Revolution contexts in which information and information-related processes and their stewardship have become so computationally connected, resulting in information science schools, programmes and departments across the continent engaging research in areas such as research data management, research impact analysis,   information ethics, bibliometrics, altmetrics, webometrics,  metadata creation and management, scholarly communication (including open access), digital humanities, and many more.

Professor Raju's inaugural lecture focuses on questioning dominant western epistemology used in knowledge and information stewardship research, and in social science research generally, and positions the knowledge and information stewardship discipline to take the lead in effecting a ‘decolonial turn’ in research methodology generally.