Walter D. Mignolo co-organizes the Decolonial Summer Course in Middelburg with Rolando Vázquez. He is an Argentine semiotician (École des Hautes Études) and professor at Duke University, who has published extensively on semiotics and literary theory, and worked on different aspects of the modern and colonial world, exploring concepts such as global coloniality, the geopolitics of knowledge, transmodernity, border thinking, and pluriversality.
http://www.waltermignolo.com/
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Rolando Vázquez is co-organizer with Walter Mignolo of the Decolonial Summer Course in Middelburg. He is assistant professor of Sociology at University College Roosevelt of Utrecht University in The Netherlands. His research circles around three interdisciplinary topics: ‘postcolonial thinking’, ‘visual social experience’ and the ‘critique of modern time’. His work brings together a variety of fields such as: critical theory, continental philosophy, post-structuralism, decolonial thinking, visual studies and aesthetics. He has written about Coloniality, Modernity, the Critique of Modern Time and Photography. His reflections on the visual aspects of social life and temporality also take expression in his photographic project: www.criticalphotography.com
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Sandew Hira, a.k.a Dew Baboeram, studied economics at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. In 1982 he published his first book on the history of struggles against colonialism in Suriname from 1630-1940. Since then he has published more than 20 books and numerous reports and articles on the history of Suriname and the position of migrants in Holland. He initiated the web-based database on indentured labour in Suriname, a digitized version of the immigration register containing detailed data on 70,000 immigrants from India, Java and China to Suriname between 1853 and 1939. He co-produced three historical documentaries on Suriname with director Ivette Forster. He is currently involved in a programme Decolonizing the mind that aims to produce alternative knowledge for eurocentric science. Hira is director of the International Institute for Scientific Research (IISR) in the Netherlands.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Fabián Barba was born in Quito in 1982. Since age 12 he started studying modern dance in La casa de la danza and later in the Frente de Danza Independiente as well as theater in the school of the theater group Malayerba. This education in his hometown allowed him to to work as a professional performer in that artistic milieu. Parallel to his artistic formation, Fabián followed for two years university studies in Communication and Literature at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Ecuador.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Gurminder K Bhambra is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Social Theory Centre at the University of Warwick. Her research interests are in the area of historical sociology and contemporary social theory and she is also interested in the intersection of the social sciences with recent work in postcolonial and decolonial studies. She is author of Rethinking Modernity: Postcolonialism and the Sociological Imagination (2007) which won the Philip Abrams Memorial Prize for best first book in sociology in 2008. She has co-edited three collections, Silencing Human Rights (with Robbie Shilliam, Palgrave, 2009); 1968 in Retrospect (with Ipek Demir, Palgrave, 2009); and African Athena (with Daniel Orrells and Tessa Roynon, OUP, 2011). Her book, Connected Sociologies, is forthcoming with Bloomsbury Academic.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Sabine Broeck, Professor of American Studies at the University of Bremen, and former Rector for International Relations at the University of Bremen, is one of the pioneering European scholars in decolonial African-American, Black Diaspora, and Whiteness Studies. Her work focuses on the intersections of race, class, gender and sexualities in the history of transatlantic modernity as a regime of (post)enslavement. She has been a longstanding and active member of the European American, and African-American Studies community; since 2007, she has been president of the international scholarly organization Collegium for African American Research (CAAR), as well as director of the University of Bremen Institute for Postcolonial and Transcultural Studies (INPUTS). She is at work on a manuscript contracted with SUNY Press: Gender and Anti-Blackness. For publications and more information, see http://www.fb10.uni-bremen.de/lehrpersonal/broeck.aspx
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Artwell Cain obtained his PhD
in 2007 at the University of Tilburg. From 1991-2000 he directed the Foundation for the Furtherance of the Well-being of Antilleans and Arubans at Rotterdam. Cain edited “Tula slave rebellion in Curaçao” (2009) and has published extensively on citizenship, the aftermatch of trans-Atlantic slavery and social ombility. He is the former director of NiNsee (National insitute of Dutch Slavery Past and Legacy, 2009-2012). and currently the director of the Institute for Cultural Heritage and Knowledge.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Photo by Suzanne Liem.
Dr. Esther Captain is a historian and director of research at the National Committee for the Remembrance of WW II (in Dutch: Nationaal Committee May 4 and 5) in Amsterdam. She is also an associated researcher at the National Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies NIOD in Amsterdam. Captain has been working as a postdoc researcher at Utrecht University and the University of Amsterdam and was affiliated with Rutgers University (NJ, USA) and fellow of the National Edowment of the Humanities at the East-West Center of the University of Hawai’i. She has published extensively on the legacy of WW II, memory and heritage studies and postcolonial history.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Jean Casimir teaches at the Université d’État d’Haïti (UEH) in the Faculté des Sciences Humaines. He began his career as a teacher and a scholar at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). He also taught as a visiting professor at Stanford University and Duke University in the United States and at the University of the West Indies, Mona in Jamaica. He served as a UN officer for the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean between 1975 and 1988 and as Ambassador to the United States and the Organization of American States between 1991 and 1997. He is the author of sever works, including La Culture Opprimée (2011), Haïti et ses elites, l’interminable dialogue de sourds (2009), and La Caraïbe, une et divisible (1991).
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Jeannette Ehlers studied at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and The Funen Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen. Her works explore the Danish slave trade and colonialism worldwide through digitally manipulated photographs and video installations. She has exhibited her work at C&H Art Space, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, CBK, Zuidoost, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Museo Del Barrio, New York, USA, ISCP, New York, US, Kianga Ellis projects, Santa Fe, US, Cartel Gallery London, England, The Total Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea, Nikolaj Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center, Cph, Denmark, BRAENNEN Gallery, Berlin, Germany, and Image 10, Vevey, Switzerland.
http:// www.jeannetteehlers.dk/
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Quinsy Gario is a cultural critic based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. A Theater, Film and Television Studies graduate of the University of Utrecht his focus lies on postcolonial and gender issues in the Dutch public sphere. He writes, consults, performs, gives workshops, produces events and makes art installations and video clips under the banner of NON EMPLOYEES. He’s a member of the pan African artist collective State of L3 and initiated the art project Zwarte Piet Is Racisme in 2011. In 2012 he founded the collective ROET IN HET ETEN and presents a weekly two hour radio program on local Amsterdam radiostation Mart Radio.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Macarena Gómez-Barris is Associate Professor of American Studies & Ethnicity and Sociology at the University of Southern California. She is the author of Where Memory Dwells: Culture and State Violence in Chile (UC Press, 2009) and co-editor of Towards a Sociology of a Trace with Herman Gray (Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2010). She is currently writing Andean Futures: Decolonial Paths for Global Solutions that challenges assumptions about indigenous thought and its relevance for the global Norths. She founded and directs the research cluster on “Indigeneity and Decoloniality,” in American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. Her articles have appeared in numerous journals. As an interdisciplinary scholar teaching on critical sociology, feminisms from the Global South, and culture making in the Americas, Macarena is committed to the art of radical pedagogy and thinking practice that defines the decolonial turn.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Lewis Gordon is Professor of Philosophy and African American Studies, with affiliation in Jewish studies and Caribbean and Latin American Studies, at the University of Connecticut at Storrs, Europhilosphy Visiting Professor at Toulouse University, and Nelson Mandela Visiting Professor in Political and International Studies at Rhodes University. His website is: http://lewisrgordon.com/
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Rosalba Icaza is senior lecturer at the Institute for Social Studies of the Erasmus University Rotterdam. She has been involved in collaborative research initiatives dealing with the global governance of knowledge making and the practices of epistemic dissent and resistance that contest its numerous institutional expressions (e.g. Global and Regional governance of trade, NGOization of development agendas, global governance of sexual and reproductive health, etc.). She is currently part of the Transnational Network Other Knowledges.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Born in Den Helder, Holland, but a descendant from Surinamese parents, Patricia Kaersenhout developed an artistic journey in which she investigates her Surinamese background in relation to her upbringing in a West European culture.
The political thread in her work raises questions about the African Diaspora movements and its relation to feminism, sexuality, racism and the history of slavery. As an artist, I’m in a constant state of becoming, she writes. Read more here
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Alanna Lockward is an author, critic and independent curator specialized in time-based undertakings. In 1988, she was appointed Director of International Affairs at Museo de Arte Moderno in Santo Domingo.
She is the founding director of Art Labour Archives, a cultural platform and agency responsible for producing situation-specific art events and exhibitions since 1996 in the US, the Caribbean, Europe and the African continent. She is general manager of the Transnational Decolonial Institute.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Maria Lugones is an Argentine scholar, philosopher, feminist, and an Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Philosophy, Interpretation, and Culture and of Philosophy and of Women’s Studies at Binghamton University in New York.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Patrice Naiambana is an African performing artist from Sierra Leone, currently based in Birmingham. He founded Tribal Soul in 1991 as a means to make visible stories from African Diaspora experiences, in response to simplistic representations of Africans in the West. Patrice’s professional background includes work with the Royal Shakespeare Company, most recently playing the title role in Kathryn Hunter’s Othello, and Warwick the Kingmaker in the Olivier Award-winning Histories Cycle Ensemble. He starred as General Mukata in the Channel 4 sitcom In Exile, and has provided voices for the award-winning BBC animation series Nina and The Neurons and Tinga Tinga Tales. His Edinburgh Fringe First Award-winning solo show The Man Who Committed Thought has been touring internationally for the last two years. His passion is performance for social transformation. http://www.tribalsoularts.com/
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Robbie Shilliam is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Queen Mary University of London. Robbie’s work aims to retrieve the importance of the thought and practice of enslaved Africans and their emancipated descendents for understanding the contemporary world order. He is also keen on investigating the links and connectivities between sufferers across the Global South. Robbie blogs at http://thedisorderofthings.com/ and has a personal blog at http://robbieshilliam.wordpress.com/ . He is co-convener of the British International Studies Association’s Colonial/Postcolonial/Decolonial working group http://cpdbisa.wordpress.com/ , a member of the International Advisory Board of the Transnational Decolonial Institute http://transnationaldecolonialinstitute.wordpress.com/ , and an advisor to the Rastafari Global Council http://www.rastafariglobalcouncil.org .
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Santiago Slabodsky is Assistant Professor of Ethics of Globalization at Claremont School of Theology. He is an Argentinean scholar trained in Jewish, Liberationist and Decolonial philosophies. He researches global ethics and the intersection between Jewish and Postcolonial social theories, especially in Latin America, the Caribbean and the Maghreb. Santiago’s courses include Postcolonialism, Ethics of Globalization, Global South Social Movements, The Frankfurt School, Post-Holocaust Jewish Thought, Rabbinic and Subaltern Thinking, and Globalizing Religion(s): Genealogies of Evil. He has lectured and published his work in Europe, Africa, Latin America, North America and the Middle East. Read more here.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Ovidiu Tichindeleanu is a philosopher and culture theorist living in Chişinău and Cluj, writing on critical social theory, decolonial thought, alternative epistemologies, and the cultural history of postcommunism. Studies of philosophy in Cluj, Strasbourg and Binghamton, New York. PhD in Philosophy (Binghamton University) with a thesis on monolinguism, modern media and the archeology of knowledge at 1900, currently prepared for publication in English.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Madina Tlostanova is a critical culture theorist and professor of philosophy at the Russian Presidential Academy of national Economy and Public Administration, living in Moscow but extensively teaching and doing research abroad, focusing on decolonial option, alterglobalism, postsocialist imaginary, fiction and contemporary art, non-Western feminism and gender studies, and the critical rethinking of Eurasian imperial/colonial histories.
Decolonial Summer School Middelburg 
Pingback: Interview with Walter Mignolo: Activism, Trajectory, and Key Concepts