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AJSW, Volume 12 Number 4 2022                                                                                                Tusasiirwe, S. 
  
 

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Stories of decolonising research education and practice: experiences 
from my Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) research 

 
Sharlotte TUSASIIRWE 

 
ABSTRACT 

The need to challenge and disrupt the colonial legacy of research and education in African contexts is an urgent one although 
voices and experiences of decolonisation in action/practice are still scanty in this context. Drawing from the African oral 
storytelling tradition where lived experience is extolled as a powerful teaching tool, in this article, I share experiences of how and 
when I came to align my Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) research to a decolonising agenda. Deeply listening to my research 
participants was central in challenging me to engage in decolonising research practices and epistemologies. The process of having 
to explain my research to the participants, in our indigenous language, led me to a journey of re-valuing, recognising, and drawing 
on indigenous African epistemologies as the foundation for the methods, ethics and methodology for my research. The main lesson 
from this experience and the major message for researchers and research educators is about the urgent need and responsibility to 
challenge and disrupt the ongoing colonial thinking and teaching where African indigenous knowledges, languages, ways of 
knowing, are continuously marginalised, if not erased. Discussions of ongoing colonisation in research education and practice are 
presented, followed by examples of decolonised African research methods and ethics. A call to action to decolonisation concludes 
the article. 

 
KEY TERMS: African storytelling, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), decolonisation, ethics, research 
 
KEY DATES 
Received: March 2022 
Revised: June 2022 
Accepted: July 2022 
Published: August 2022 
 
Funding: None 
Conflict of Interest: None 
Permission: None 
Ethics approval: Not applicable 
 
Author/s details:  
Sharlotte Tusasiirwe, Lecturer, Social work and community welfare, Western Sydney University, Email: s.tusasiirwe@westernsydney.edu.au 

 
Current and previous volumes are available at: 

https://africasocialwork.net/current-and-past-issues/ 

 
 
How to reference using ASWNet style: 
Tusasiirwe , S. (2022). Stories of decolonising research education and practice: experiences from my Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) research. 
African Journal of Social Work, 12(4), 207-213. 

 
  



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AJSW, Volume 12 Number 4 2022                                                                                                Tusasiirwe, S. 
  
 

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INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND  

There is a troubling thinking that colonisation is a thing of the past implying that there is no need for decolonisation 
in the current era. However, as this article shall demonstrate and building on what other African authors like 
Bulhan (2015), Mbembe (2016), Chilisa (2012), Wa Thiongʼo (1986) have argued, colonisation is still ongoing 
and it has gone beyond dispossession of lands and peoples to colonisation of people’s minds, their being and 
knowing. Colonisation continues to manifest in situations where the knowledges, beliefs, worldviews of colonisers 
continue to be imposed on other societies, consequently devaluing, marginalising, disregarding, eroding the 
knowledges, beliefs, values, of the colonised. 

Colonisation in research practice and education continues to manifest in several ways. First is through the 
ideology of the colonised which means that the colonised are now their own ‘colonisers’ whereby they are 
engaging in perpetuating the devaluation and marginalisation of their own local or indigenous cultures and 
knowledges by believing and presenting white western knowledges as universal or ‘the standard’.  Most 
institutions of learning in Africa are still “westernised” as “all that they aspire to is to become local instantiations 
of a dominant academic model based on Eurocentric epistemic canon…a canon that attributes truth only to the 
Western way of knowledge production” ignoring and devaluing other epistemic traditions (Mbembe, 2015, n.p). 
Therefore, to decolonise in African context is not necessarily about de-westernisation or total rejection of 
European knowledge traditions but it is about “defining clearly what is at the centre”.  As Ngugi Wa Thiongo 
(1986) elaborated, decolonisation is about re-centering, that is, putting Africa, its knowledges, cultures, mother 
tongues/indigenous languages, African people, at the centre, before extending outwards to learn about European 
and other knowledge traditions, ways of being and doing, which are needed only if they are relevant for Africans 
to understand themselves and to move forward.    

Decolonisation is not something new, but the gap and challenge for Africa remains in articulating clearly what 
it is all about and coming up with propositions of what the alternative to Eurocentric model could look like 
(Mbemba, 2016). In social work education and research, although the commitment to decolonisation is growing 
rapidly, examples of how decolonising practices are operationalised remains an important gap for researchers 
(Tusasiirwe, 2022). This is the gap that this article seeks to respond to as it provides lived experiences of epistemic 
colonisation and how decolonisation happened during the author’s pursuit of PhD research at an Australian 
university but with field work in a Ugandan context. I share my story of how in the process of doing my PhD, I 
was taken back to reflect on how colonisation and colonialism in research education and practice remain an 
unfinished business unless we engage in two critical decolonisation steps of un-learning deficit colonial views 
and re-learning to re-value what we know, believe, and value as Africans. By way of structure, I will first discuss 
ongoing colonisation in research education and practice. Then I will explore decolonisation drawing on my 
experiences during PhD research. I discuss African indigenous oral storytelling and the African research methods 
of individual, communal conversation and observation that can be used in African research. Decolonising ethics 
and alternative Obuntu/Ubuntu ethics are discussed and lastly, call to action to decolonise is presented.   
 
ONGOING COLONISATION IN RESEARCH EDUCATION AND PRACTICE  
 
Western languages, research methodologies and methods predominated all my research education and practice. 
In my foundational education at primary level in Uganda, we were forced to speak English and punished for 
speaking our own indigenous languages at school. While learning English was compulsory, none of the indigenous 
languages was (is). I never got a chance to learn to write my own indigenous language which I learnt to speak 
only while in my local community. Erasing our indigenous languages meant erasing all the epistemologies and 
culture embedded in them. At university level, non-African texts, literature on research have been taught as the 
legitimate ways of doing research and knowing, leaving our lit/orature in the margins. Unsurprisingly, when it 
came to conceptualising my PhD research proposal in Australia, I framed my research in what I was taught were 
the legitimate methods and methodologies in research and academia. I had originally planned to use western 
methods including interviewing, observation and Focus Group Discussions and my methodology was grounded 
in feminist phenomenology.  

In my proposal, I stated that I would use life story interviewing as I read it from Atkinson (2002).  As with the 
strategy of colonisation where western texts are often read or presented as legitimate, I had struggled to find texts 
where my African oral storytelling methodology was written about yet I was told that I must provide a written 
reference to the methods and methodology I finally choose to use in my PhD research. Being situated in an 
Australian tertiary education system that predominantly privileges western ways of doing research and academic 
writing, it was regarded not authentic to say I would use my indigenous storytelling method learnt from my local 
village, without showing previous researchers/scholars who had written or used the method. Owing to the 
predominant availability of knowledges from the North, texts documenting western knowledges are 
overwhelmingly available in university libraries as compared to texts documenting knowledges on methods and 
methodologies from the South (Chilisa 2012). It is easier for teachers to refer students to read western literature 



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because this is ‘available’ but also it is what most of the teachers have also largely read. By university libraries 
not stocking literature or referencing orature from the South and by teachers in universities not including literature 
from authors in the South on their reading lists, our knowledges from the South are erased and are not within reach 
in our institutions of learning. Also, coming from an oral society, most of my learning in the community was 
passed on orally using orature like stories, proverbs, folklore, songs. This is rich orature that also remains in the 
margins as universities privilege literature/written work as the ‘legitimate’ sources of knowledge. Therefore, in 
my research proposal, I easily referenced that I would follow life story interviewing method by Atkinson because 
I could not reference my mother who had taught me African indigenous oral story telling since this was not written 
about anywhere.  Having successfully defended my proposal, I set out to seek ethical clearance from three ethical 
committees in Australia and Uganda. Having obtained ethical clearance, I set out to conduct my fieldwork in 
Uganda. It was during this field work, in my face-to-face interactions with the participants, using our indigenous 
languages, that I was, unexpectedly, led to the process of decolonisation.  
 
DECOLONISING RESEARCH METHODS AND METHODOLOGIES 
 
Importance of indigenous languages 
 
In decolonising research, it is important that the research methods used build on the epistemologies and languages 
of the participants and that they are understandable to the researched (Chilisa, 2012). Decolonisation process has 
the ultimate goal of recovering, restoring and re-valuing indigenous ways of knowing and local and indigenous 
people’s languages.  My PhD research project targeted exploring and learning from experiences of three subgroups 
of participants, that is, social policy makers, community workers and older women living a local community in 
Uganda. Social policy makers and community workers were formally educated and therefore could speak English 
during our conversations. Although we sometimes stumbled upon concepts or words in our local languages 
(Luganda and Runyankore) which we would not easily translate into English, since we understood both English 
and the local languages, our conversations were mostly smooth even when we spoke a mixture of these languages. 
However, when it came to conversations with the older women, I could only use Runyankore/Rukiga because the 
older women did not understand English. The fact that I had to communicate purely in my local language was the 
turning point that led me to recognising how I had been drawing on our indigenous ways of knowing and being 
without giving due acknowledgment to these epistemologies and the culture they are embedded in.  

During my field work with older women, I needed to explain to them what the research I was doing was all 
about as well as the methods I was intending to use to collect data. Although I had stated in my proposal that I 
was using interviewing method, when it came to translation of interviewing method to Runyankole/Rukiga, the 
concept of interviewing did not translate well to mean the type of conversations I was intending to have with the 
older women. In our local context in Western Ugandan communities, interviewing is generally understood as a 
method of gaining data or information from someone through strict question and answer. This interviewing 
method is often used by institutions like police during their criminal investigations. Also interviewing method is 
often used when applicants go for interviews when seeking employment. In this interviewing, there are unequal 
power relations between the interviewers and the interviewees and there is no meaningful relationship. In the 
process of self-reflection and translation of interviewing into my context, I came to the realisation that I was not 
going to ‘interview’ older women, but I was going to have ‘conversations’ with the older women. Conversations 
in Runyankole/Rukiga language are called okuganira.  Okuganira is about story telling in a conversational and 
relational way. When I explained this method of having conversations and the reasoning behind my request for 
stories from older women, it became very clear to me that I was actually drawing on the African oral storytelling 
tradition where we sit with older people who tell us stories from their experiences with the goals of teaching moral 
lessons and imparting knowledge, norms, values and ways of survival. Although I had read about life story 
interviewing, I did not feel connected to the way this method was being written about, but I knew, followed, and 
explained African oral storytelling because this translated in my local indigenous language; it resonated, I knew 
it because I had experienced it; it was my frame of reference. 
 
Reclaiming African indigenous oral storytelling: methodology and methods 
 
African indigenous storytelling is a long-held tradition and powerful pedagogical tool for communicating 
knowledge and wisdom (Chinyowa 2001, Utley 2019). It is through stories that acceptable behaviours, morals, 
expectations, cultural values, and worldviews are transmitted across generations (Chilisa 2012, Chinyowa 2001, 
Utley 2019, Wa Thiongʼo 1986). African stories are often told not just for entertainment but with the intention 
that listeners or readers learn a moral lesson from the experiences being shared. Through story telling is how 
African philosophies like Obuntu/Ubuntu, values, societal expectations, norms have been passed on from 
generations to generations. During my research, I was not only drawing on my indigenous knowledge about oral 
storytelling but I was also drawing on and remembering my experiences of how my mother and the community I 



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grew up in in rural Uganda had taught me through stories, told at the fireplace, in the evening, after a day’s work. 
Having conversations with older women in my local language was my ‘ahaa’ moment where I was able to connect 
myself back to my language and epistemologies embedded in, the ways of knowing and being of people in my 
community who were now participating in the research. I suppose I would not have come to this moment of 
connection had I conducted my research in English language only. I experienced a critical moment of learning 
and relearning that had not happened in my 20 years of formal education. The lesson learnt and the main argument 
in this article is the illustration of the importance of indigenous languages and ways of knowing in connecting us 
back to what Chilisa calls ‘the non-academic knowledge system of the researched [that] has survived despite the 
best efforts of colonisation to devalue it’ (Chilisa, 2014, p.5). The non-academic knowledge system is often 
distinguished from the so-called academic knowledge system which is informed by western disciplines, but this 
may not necessarily resonate with the researched (Chilisa, 2014). Decolonisation theory and process requires 
connection to the researched’s and African frames of reference and epistemologies.  

African indigenous storytelling informs three research methods that can be adopted in research in African 
context, that is individual or one-on-one conversations; communal participatory conversations; learning by 
observations.  I adopted these methods in my research by first having one-on-one conversations with older women 
where we talked about stories of their lives and the lessons we can learn from them. I did a preliminary analysis 
of these individual conversations and made a report of common themes or stories the older women shared. Then 
following our communal storytelling approach, I organised group conversations with the older women where 
collective stories were shared in a group set up.  I invited the 10 older women who had participated in the 
individual conversations to come for a communal conversation. I felt obligated to establish a communal fireplace 
where shared stories would be told and collective knowledge co-produced from those experiences shared. 
However, also as a researcher on a decolonising agenda, I felt obligated to organise a communal fireplace where 
I would get a chance to go back to the older women to share with them the knowledge and lessons that I was going 
to write about in the PhD thesis. I had been engaged in most research projects conceptualised in western ways of 
knowing where we as researchers went into the communities, we collected data and therefore knowledge from 
them but we never went back to the researched communities to explain what knowledge it was we were writing 
about them. We produced reports often for funders of the research. The reports were written in English which 
most of these local communities would never have access to because of the foreign language. This was the ‘dirty’ 
research I wanted to disrupt (Smith 1999) by sharing with the older women the knowledge I had gained from the 
conversations with each of them. During our group okuganira/conversations I shared with them the messages I 
had learnt from listening to their stories and reading the transcripts from those individual conversations. The 
women validated, expounded, and deeply analysed the preliminary lessons in a communal set-up, co-producing 
collective stories.  

Apart from co-producing knowledge with the participants, African individual and group conversations are 
unique in that they are relational and non-hierarchical. Each one’s story and contribution is valued. Genuine, non-
manipulative relationships that go beyond the research project are formed and built during these conversations. 
While in most western research set-ups, relationships should be terminated or even avoided to encourage 
objectivity, African conversations, trust and relationships are a means and end in the research process. The 
women’s group okuganiira were unique compared to western focus group discussions because they were rooted 
in indigenous African epistemologies. First, the group okuganiira regarded the rituals and taboos of the 
participants as vital parts of the research process. Second, they involved older women empathising, counselling, 
and supporting each other. To illustrate the first point, during the group conversations, we introduced ourselves 
to each other to be aware of each other’s self-definition but also to affirm our connection and confidence in our 
culture.  I introduced myself, the village I come from, my clan, the totem of my clan, my marital status and the 
village and clan I married into. This was to establish any connections, for example, if there were any of my clan’s 
mates or women who came from my village or older women who could have some relatives married in my village. 
One of the older women had a relative married to someone in my village and she had been to my village to visit. 
This was the beginning of a relationship that would go beyond the group okuganiira and my PhD research. Even 
if my research project ended, when I am in Uganda, I visit these older women as they are now part of my communal 
family and network. 

In relation to the second point, older women empathised and supported each other during the okuganiira. At 
the beginning of the group conversation, as we set rules to guide the conversation, I came with the rules and 
conditions I had committed to in my ethics application. I told older women that they should keep all the 
information discussed in the group confidential and that they should share their personal experiences in a passive 
voice or third person voice to avoid social harm. The older women agreed with this initially. However, as the 
conversations went on, it was evident that the older women, although coming from different parts of the village, 
knew each other’s experiences and stories and it was impossible for women to follow my rules that required them 
to share their stories in a passive or third person voice. During the group conversations, the women comforted one 
who had no grandchildren. While at the beginning of the okuganiira, this older woman introduced herself as 
childless, the other older women knew that she was not a barren woman. They gave her reassurance, and 



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empathised with her, while demonstrating deep understanding that she could have been feeling the stigma that is 
often experienced by older women with no children and grandchildren, in a community where children are a vital 
source of status and identity, particularly to women. The older women supported each other and together 
brainstormed possible strategies to use to live in harmony with family members, particularly some stubborn 
daughters-in-law. The group provided space where older women talked about their lives and where they affirmed 
and supported each other. These were healing experiences which could have been missed had the women heeded 
my requests that they use the passive third person voice to talk about their personal experiences. As African 
indigenous scholars Chilisa & Ntseane (2010, p. 629) remind us, there is a need “to move to healing research 
methods that allow research participants to name and share pain and to collectively envision strategies for 
resistance, resilience and survival.”  

African individual and group conversation research methods were supplemented by observation method. This 
observation method involved following the participants and actively interacting, participating, and observing their 
everyday actions and inactions. We talked about their experiences and feelings, their frustrations and enablers as 
we observed them. The observations and conversations took place everywhere, anytime making learning and 
knowledge creation boundaryless and timeless. Through this method of following participants, I had the 
opportunity to tell the story through lived experience and real encounters with the participants and their 
communities. Adopting such African research methods required decolonising research ethics.  
 
Decolonising ethics  
 
Decolonising research goes hand in hand with decolonising ethics which should be contextual and not a one-size-
fits all. From my experience, attaining ethical clearance from ethical committees does not guarantee or mean 
ethical research. Rather what is defined as ethical behaviour for researchers in African contexts should be defined 
by African ways of being and doing instead of an imposition of western ethical frameworks which tend to be top 
down and prioritise documentation over people and relationships. For example, informed verbal consent was more 
appropriate for oral societies and participants who cannot read and write instead of imposing written forms of 
demonstrating consent. Because how informed is consent demonstrated by thumb printing forms that the 
participant her/himself cannot read? Also, regarding confidentiality, participants should be given the option of 
choosing or waiving confidentiality as some participants were willing to have their real names appear against their 
stories instead of imposing use of pseudonyms for all. Beyond documentation and paperwork, ethical behaviour 
enshrined in Obuntu/Ubuntu philosophies was more appropriate for communities for example the ethics of mutual 
respect and responsibility, mutual empathy and concern for what the communities were experiencing, and the 
researcher taking on the responsibility of ensuring that something is done to change or address the social 
problems/challenges the community was experiencing. Ethical research should be one that makes a difference in 
the communities rather than one that benefits the researchers and their funders.  
 
Decolonising as a difficult process requiring courage: Use of orature in data analysis and writing 
 
Decolonisation is a possible but difficult process because it requires coming to know through ways that have been 
trivialised as backward while questioning western ways of knowing that we have been indoctrinated to revere. 
While I knew that I had used and drawn on the long-held African storytelling traditions to collect life stories and 
experiences of my participants, I was also aware that in academia which is dominated by western epistemologies, 
such indigenous ways of knowing have been labelled as illegitimate. I was aware that around the world, indigenous 
methodologies and knowledges are not accepted by most western researchers and scholars (Smith 2012). That it 
is still hard for students to conduct research from their perspective, and even when supported by their supervisors, 
students who have used indigenous methodologies have been criticised for not using the so called ‘bona fide’ 
research methodologies (Bessarab and Ng'andu 2010). Being honest about the African oral storytelling tradition 
meant putting up with the risk and pressure that my PhD may be marked down because a western method and 
methodology has not been used. Decolonisation and disrupting the status quo in our research education system 
requires both knowledge and courage. I was courageous from with in because I knew that I was standing up 
against an education system that had devalued our indigenous knowledges, languages, philosophies. Thus, my 
thesis references African indigenous storytelling and I use African proverbs, stories like the story of the humming 
bird, and I acknowledge community people like my mother as sages, oral scholars whose indigenous knowledge 
I was drawing on in my PhD. This is a disruption of the status quo by acknowledging that people who may not 
have university qualifications have legitimate knowledges that must not be silenced. As Kenyan decolonization 
author Wane (2008) has argued, indigenous knowledge, orature and literature are a living experience and the most 
crucial form of anti-colonial resistance.  
 
Decolonising as a liberatory experience  
 



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My experience in decolonising research methodologies is that the process is so beneficial that it results into a 
liberatory research and education. The process results into research and education that connects rather than isolate 
students from who they are, their worldviews, cultural values and generally their way of being and doing, which 
does not represent just the individual students but whole communities, generations and generations. The individual 
experience becomes a collective one that makes communities, their philosophies visible, indeed demonstrating 
how the personal is political. The decolonising moments can be quite emotional, tearful, confronting, full of anger, 
but also freedom after finally realising an oppressive education system that alienated, and isolated you from your 
cultural values, languages. The realisation also gives you courage to take further action to share the experience 
and invite others (colonisers, colonised) to engage in decolonisation to create an education system that embraces 
rather than tolerates diversity of epistemologies, experiences, all students bring in academia.      

As my PhD examiners noted, my thesis contributed to providing a critique of hegemonic western research 
traditions, an area we still need more voices in, especially coming from colonised’s contexts. We need more 
research projects that disrupt the marginalisation of knowledges of the colonised. Liberatory research and 
education is not one that is just about upholding the dominant ideological systems, research methods and 
methodologies but one that allows us as students to connect deeply with ourselves and communities and allows 
people especially from western contexts to question, challenge, reflect on their assumptions, as my examiner 
highlighted:  

 
As an examiner and a researcher from a Western and European paradigm I have had, of course to question 
some of my own assumptions and to apply critical reflexivity within the examining process. Here I have 
drawn on my adherence to a radical and progressive tradition in social work and in qualitative research 
(both of which have a commitment to rejecting individualistic and pathologising discourses and to 
centralising structural factors and marginalised voices). I have also drawn on my work with researchers 
in Zambia, Nigeria and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, which have hopefully sensitised me to some 
of the profound issues raised in your dissertation about colonization and the long shadows that it casts. 
On this basis, I have identified some areas that could be extended or strengthened and these are indicated 
below (minor revisions and corrections) (Examiners report). 
 

A CALL TO ACTION: THE ENDURING NEED TO DECOLONISE RESEARCH EDUCATION AND 
THE ROLE OF EDUCATORS AROUND THE WORLD  
 
All researchers and educators need to teach and encourage students to use their own indigenous ways of knowing 
and researching in their bachelor’s, masters or PhD projects. It is therefore imperative that all educators and 
researchers in the North and South acquaint themselves with decolonisation and indigenous ways of knowing so 
that they can be able to support better the students everywhere they are. Educators and researchers especially those 
teaching and supervising international students including African students in the North need to challenge 
themselves from within including questioning the thinking that western methods and methodologies are superior 
or the best everywhere. There is need for openness, learning about non-western ways of thinking and being to 
support better students from diverse backgrounds. To evaluate how complicit or not in perpetuating colonisation 
and colonialism, educators and researchers should gauge themselves by looking at how much they have read or 
endeavoured to know and teach about indigenous ways of knowing at any level. 

The call to action to decolonise research and education in African and global contexts is that educators 
wherever they are must critically examine their own teaching and research starting with their reading lists. The 
reading lists show whose knowledges and voices teachers are privileging and therefore whose they are 
marginalising. In my education in Uganda, Sweden, Australia, there is still very little attempt in the curriculum to 
incorporate writers, methods, and therefore knowledges from the global South, a problematic situation which 
continues to position the West as producers of knowledge and others as consumers of knowledge. As we have 
often joked about our education experiences, in Africa, we learn about the whole world, but no one learns about 
us, our philosophies, indigenous knowledges, which in this era of decolonisation, must stop. Decolonised 
education spaces are spaces where diverse epistemologies and perspectives about research or any other topics are 
embraced and discussed.   

 

 
 
 
 
 
 



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AJSW, Volume 12 Number 4 2022                                                                                                Tusasiirwe, S. 
  
 

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