1.INTRODUCTION^[1]

Recent literature and initiatives in Peace and Conflict Studies (PCS) and Social Sciences more broadly have drawn attention to the massive asymmetries that exist in knowledge production (e.g., Briggs & Weathers, 2016; Crawford, Mai-Bornu & Landström, 2021; Johnson, Lechartre, Mart, Robison & Hughes, 2022; Vogel, Džuverović, Tripathi, Kušić, Zapata Cancelado, Ramachandran, Dhungana & Taithe, 2024). These asymmetries mirror not only the institutional affiliation of most published authors (based in the Global North), but affect epistemological views, methodologies and subjects being studied, defining what is considered valid and relevant knowledge. Despite the existence of long-term solid critiques to knowledge production, such as feminist, post- and decolonial studies, patterns of exclusion persist: research agendas, funding flows, and publication standards often marginalise scholars from the Global South, reinforcing a centre–periphery dynamic that has profound implications for how conflict, peacebuilding, and development are understood and acted upon.

This article draws on a Publishing and Writing Workshop funded by the British Academy, one of the existing tools that aim to address these imbalances. The workshop was entitled Visibilising Marginalized Early Career Researchers in Peace, Conflict and Security Studies (hereafter “the Visibilising project”), and culminated in a three-day writing and publishing workshop in Meru, Kenya, engaging Early Career Researchers (ECRs) from across the Global South for intensive training in academic publishing and grant writing. In this article we reflect on this process by not only assessing the workshop, but also reflecting on the potential and challenges of these types of initiatives when it comes to shifting knowledge asymmetries.

Our analysis is grounded in a reflexive methodology that combines collective autoethnography with participant feedback. Drawing on Attia and Edge’s (2017) concept of retrospective reflexivity, we analyse how the project unfolded and how our own positionalities shaped it. We are three women scholars—two from Brazil and one from Kenya—who identify as mothers, ECRs, and academics with experience in both the Global South and North. We all hold PhDs from European institutions, with two currently based in Europe and one in Brazil, and we experience the privilege of navigating different academic environments and social and cultural realities. Based on this stand, we recognise what we define as a “knowledge trap”, that is, the paradox of needing validation from Global North academia in order to challenge the very hierarchies it sustains.

We reflect on the workshop based on this very particular stand. We consider in our reflections the feedback evaluation form received from the participants, our collective reflections, and participant narratives to examine both the possibilities and limits of small-scale interventions aimed at structural change.

In our analysis we are inspired by a recent reflection by John Paul Lederach (2025). Referring to the action of social movements in the context of challenging and polarised times, and drawing on the analogy of bees pollinating and spiders weaving, Lederach emphasises the importance of circulating through communities, listening deeply, and fostering connections without centralized control. Based on this analogy, we argue that contesting knowledge production patterns must be an all-encompassing movement that must be done incrementally, through an approach that is both bottom-up (reaching the established structures and influencing them) and inside-out (moving horizontally, i.e. across the pluriverse, fostering exchange between different types of knowledge).

We further argue that ECRs are uniquely positioned to act as pollinators, as they bring lived experiences from marginalised contexts, experiment with diverse methodologies, and question who decides what counts as legitimate research. That said, sustaining their transformative potential depends on equitable institutional support and genuinely reciprocal North–South collaboration.

We structure our reflections as follows: the next section situates our work within the broader literature on global knowledge inequalities, particularly in PCS; we then present the design and outcomes of the Visibilising project, detailing how the Meru workshop sought to build capacity and foster collaboration among Global South ECRs; subsequently we reflect on the challenges encountered—structural, logistical, and epistemic—and the lessons these hold for future initiatives. We conclude by considering how incremental, relational efforts such as ours can contribute to weaving a more inclusive and dynamic web of knowledge production.

2.KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION HIERARCHIES:AN OVERVIEW

Critiques about science and knowledge production are no news in social sciences. In recent years, however, this critique has gained new traction, pushed by decolonial studies (e.g., Grosfoguel, 2007; Smith, 2012) and an increasing number of publications scrutinising knowledge production patterns in academic journals (e.g., Briggs & Weathers, 2016; Crawford et al., 2021; Johnson et al., 2022; Vogel et al., 2024). Indeed, different studies have shown how academic representation is unbalanced, largely favouring work produced by scholars based in the Global North while invisibilising knowledge production from the Global South.

In a 2016 article, for example, Briggs and Weathers analysed articles published in two leading journals on African Studies between 1993 and 2013, looking into who was publishing and who was cited. They found that, while the number of articles published by women had risen dramatically over the years (from 20% to nearly 50%), the proportion of articles published by Africa-based academics had declined over time (from 25% to 15% of all contributions) (Briggs & Weathers, 2016, p. 474). Accordingly, this decline was the result of a falling acceptance rate (from 16% to less than 10%), which contrasts to the increase in submission rates by African-based scholars. The authors further noted that African-based scholars received fewer citations than non-Africa-based authors and one of the possible explanations for this, in their view, is because Africa-based authors tend to focus on specific countries, while non-Africa-based authors are more likely to generalize to the continent or study topics like conflict and economics.

Looking at six gender and politics journals (including four leading journals in the Global North and two based in Africa), Medie and Kang (2018) also found a significant representation gap regarding Global South-based scholars. In the four leading journals, the highest proportion of articles from Global South-based authors was less than 5% and in one of the journals this was just over 1%. Also, some countries like Brazil, South Africa and India had the highest representation. In contrast, the African journals proved to be more inclusive (with 94% and 73% of articles published by Global South-based scholars), and presenting a far more diverse representation in terms of countries.

In PCS this trend is no different. A recent study by Johnson et al. (2022) has shown that, notwithstanding the consolidation of the ‘local turn’ in peacebuilding studies, representation asymmetries are still very sharp. Examining a dataset of 4,318 journal articles on peace indexed in the Web of Science between 2015 and 2018, they found that authors affiliated to High-Income Countries (HICs) have contributed to 72% of all publications, despite representing only 15% of the global population. In contrast, in 2018 the share of articles published by authors based in Low-Income Countries (LICs) was a meagre 0,7%. The situation was slightly better in the case of Lower-Middle-Income Countries (LMCs), with 5,8% and increasingly better for Upper-Middle-Income Countries (UMCs), with 22% (up from a scale of 6% in 2005). Besides asymmetrical representation in authorship, Johnson et al. also noted a discrepancy in the composition of editorial boards of key PCS journals, with 80% of their members based in HICs.

These asymmetries also affect the content of knowledge production. In their analysis, Johnson et al. (2022) observe that only 14% of the articles referred to LICs, in contrast to 30% on HICs, 33% on UMCs and 23% on LMCs. Perhaps more worrisome, they note that HICs-based authors dominate the production of knowledge on their own countries, but also regarding other regions, in particular LICs, authoring 76% of articles on these countries. This creates a ‘centre-periphery’ dynamic, whereby the gaze of the realities of the Global South are inherently framed by the perspective of the Global North.

The implications of these patterns are huge. First, they affect theory production and what counts as valid knowledge (Crawford et al., 2021; Vogel et al., 2024). This, in turn, affects patterns of research funding, leading to a vicious circle that consolidates the same type of knowledge and knowledge production. While increasing the number of Global South-based authors may help change these patterns, this is not necessarily the case. Inclusive knowledge urges the questioning of structural patterns sustaining knowledge production and its validation, and this urges us to go back in time to understand how the idea of valid knowledge was constructed in the first place.

In Social Sciences, several authors have called into question the nature of knowledge production and its Eurocentric and colonial roots. Wallerstein (1997) for instance, pointed to the ‘avatars’ of Eurocentrism that have shaped the institutionalisation and expansion of academia worldwide, including historiography (centred on the idea of a modern, civilised and progressive Europe, a model to be followed), its universalist appeal, and Orientalism. Ultimately, what these avatars do is to conceal the violence embedded in knowledge production and portray it as ‘neutral’. Authors such as Quijano (2024), Mignolo (2011), and Grosfoguel (2007) have further contributed to this discussion by highlighting how the colonial matrix of power was established through European colonization and perpetuated over time by ‘coloniality’, which continues to reproduce social, racial, and epistemic hierarchies long after formal colonialism ended. Focusing more specifically on research methodologies and the points of view of indigenous populations, Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2012) has further shown in detail how Western research traditions have imperialist and colonial foundations which have consolidated extractive practices by objectifying and dehumanising indigenous peoples, marginalising indigenous knowledge systems, consolidating power imbalances that often leads to ethical violations, including disrespect for cultural protocols, among many other problems.

The net result of these trends is very concrete in terms of affecting patterns of knowledge production. For starters, the structural problems affecting the stark gap between Global North and South academic production is directly related to broader structural inequalities in the global political and economic order (Medie & Kang, 2018). More often than not the educational system in the Global South has much less funding than their Northern counterparts. Scholars have often less access to research funding and are often burdened by heavy teaching loads and other constraints, such as lack of access to major databases and research software (Briggs & Weathers, 2016; Medie & Kang, 2018). Many academics further supplement their income with consultancy work, and are thus unable to devote the required time for intensive research or publishing. In the case of women, this is further complicated by the extent of gender inequalities in many countries in the Global South (Medie & Kang, 2018).

Another issue relates to the dominance of specific methodologies and other forms of representation. While colonialism expressed itself through different dominant languages (including French, Spanish, and Portuguese), English has become the dominant language and top high-ranking journals are published in English, which forces Global South scholars to master this language if they want their research to have an international impact and be cited. Language is problematic not only for material reasons (the need to master it or having to pay for translation) but also because each language has a specific structure that is not necessarily the best one to capture another country’s reality; it can, in fact, misrepresent or distort local knowledge (Maschietto, 2018; Vogel et al., 2024; Adegoke & Alvarez, 2025). Relatedly, the Global North emphasis on ‘theory building’ and comparative large-scale studies often dismisses the value of more localised studies that may not be ‘generalisable’ but have more impact locally in the Global South.

‘How to change these patterns and promote a more just system of knowledge production and representation?’ is then a crucial question, albeit very difficult to answer. A first step has been taken by several authors from the Global South and North, which is simply questioning the current dominant knowledge system and recognising its limitations (as the authors cited so far have done) (see also Cruz, 2021; Silva & Bezerra, 2024; Vilela, Hoff & Blanco, 2024).

The next step is to provide space for alternative scholarly views to be spread and taken as seriously as mainstream approaches have been. This is harder, as it means that the boundaries of what is legitimate and valid knowledge need to be contested and pushed. It can also be paradoxical, as it may entail the questioning of the very legitimacy of current standards of knowledge production. And here lies a key problem that we will here refer to as the ‘knowledge trap’, that is, the seemingly unavoidable pressure to participate in Global North academia—often at its margins—in order to gain legitimacy and relevance, even though the intention is changing the system itself. It represents the idea of promoting change from the inside, which brings the double challenge of partly adapting to current knowledge production patterns while contesting them and bringing about systemic change.

We acknowledge from the outset that Global South scholars start at a structural disadvantage, as we usually have fewer resources and opportunities, and yet must often match or exceed the output of our Northern peers to receive comparable recognition. Many of us have also faced a long and arduous educational path, which adds to our disadvantage. This raises the unresolved question of whether such a trap can ever truly be broken.

At the same time, we must also recognise our own epistemic privilege and capacity to navigate multiple worlds. In fact, even though our academic training is rooted in a system that has its roots in colonial dynamics, we inhabit the pluriverse and have a firsthand experience of our world as well as the knowledge of the mechanisms of the mainstream system of knowledge production. We move across different contexts, experiencing these inequalities firsthand and can engage, therefore, in deepening this dialogue.

In the next sections we delve into our attempt, and challenges related, to contribute to the overcoming of this knowledge trap through a workshop focused on academic production for Global South Early Career Scholars (ECRs).

3. PROJECT BACK GROUND AND DESIGN

The ‘Visibilising Project’ must be understood in light of previous collaborative work among the leading proponents, as well as a previous writing workshop that took place in 2019. The 2019 proposal (Interdisciplinary and Collaborative Research on Peace and Security: Publishing and Grant Writing Workshop for Early Career Researchers in Eastern Africa) was also written in the context of a British Academy call by one of the three authors and other collaborators. The project identified and addressed the underrepresentation of young African researchers in international Peace, Conflict and Security publications. During the lead author’s postdoctoral fellowship at the African Leadership Centre at King’s College London, a significant study was released examining peace and security-themed academic articles published by scholars from African-based institutions since 1960. This study revealed profound disparities that had a lasting impact on understanding the field’s representation gaps.

This initiative was designed as a direct response to the evidence of systemic exclusion, aiming to provide African ECRs with the skills and networks necessary to break through traditional publishing barriers. The workshop sought an incremental approach to knowledge production and therefore supported 30 Peace and Security ECRs from Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia and South Sudan.

While this workshop successfully helped some ECRs get published (Munyao 2020; Munyao 2021a, 2021b; Munyao & Tanui, 2021; Opongo 2021; Chiliswa 2022), it was just a small step in a global context of systemic asymmetries. Since then, call for more diversity and for decolonizing knowledge in peace, conflict, and security studies continued to grow. The UN’s emphasis on valuing local knowledge in peacebuilding further supported the rationale for similar initiatives. Moreover, while the 2019 project had focused on fostering collaborations among ECRs within the Eastern Africa region, and the resulting partnerships reflected this regional scope, there was an increasing importance of international collaboration.

The takeaways from the 2019 workshop helped us frame the 2024 proposal. This time, the three of us were engaged in a parallel project, a journal special issue focused on views from the Global South on peace and democracy (Maschietto, Bueno & Njeri, 2025), where we tried to gather submissions from authors based in different parts of the Global South. When a new call for the British Academy came out, we decided to submit a proposal aligned with this project, focusing on early career scholars from the Global South.

This new proposal acknowledged that the evidence base regarding whose knowledge is valued in academic discourse was still developing. The new workshop aimed to reach more ECRs working across different contexts and areas within Peace, Conflict and Security Studies, thereby building upon and consolidating the gains from the earlier Eastern Africa initiative while extending its geographic and thematic scope. This expansion aligned with the UN’s call for locally-led peacebuilding, as outlined in General Assembly Resolution 2282, which emphasizes the importance of diversifying knowledge sources that inform program design. The ‘Visibilising workshop’ directly addressed these needs by targeting ECRs working in diverse local contexts across the Global South. The project also responded to growing calls for fundamental epistemological and methodological reorientation in academic scholarship, as described in the previous section. By supporting ECRs from the Global South, the workshop aimed to contribute to this broader scholarly movement toward more inclusive and diverse knowledge production.

More practically, the ‘Visibilizing workshop’ responded directly to participant feedback from the 2019 workshop, where attendees expressed disappointment at the lack of tangible outputs at the end of the workshop. Based on this input, the project proposal was ambitious in its promise that concrete deliverables would not be optional “nice-to-have” outcomes, but essential components integral to the project’s success. This represented a deliberate departure from traditional academic workshops that often conclude with inspiring discussions but produce limited actionable results.

Also, differently from 2019, and committed to amplifying less visible voices, and having decided to hold the event in Kenya, instead of working with a university based in the capital, we partnered with Meru University of Science and Technology – a relatively new institution which was established in 2008 as a university college of Jomo Kenyatta University of Art and Technology JKUAT and located in the rural area, over 200 km from the capital Nairobi. This was also in recognition of the need to decentralise knowledge, stepping away from the elite, capital city-based universities, and prioritising institutions on the periphery that are often marginalised in collaborative partnerships.

In terms of participants’ selection, recognizing the structural inequalities that limit Global South scholars’ access to doctoral opportunities, we prioritized achieving meaningful international participation and diversity across theory, geography, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and race.

As mothers and caregivers, who have experienced the challenges of balancing competitive academic demands with caring responsibilities for our children, partners, and parents, we were particularly concerned with the inclusion of women in the workshop. Despite care responsibilities significantly impacting productivity, publications, and career progression (Ekine, 2018; Gaudet, Marchand, Bujaki & Bourgeault, 2021; Sewell & Barnett, 2019), they receive little recognition in grant applications or job searches, as academic success is typically measured by metrics that fail to account for caregiving commitments. To counter this, our application form asked prospective participants to identify any obstacles they faced related to childcare, allowing us to allocate part of our modest budget toward covering these barriers and enabling broader participation.

While our target participants were Early Career Researchers (ECRs) working on Peace and Conflict Studies issues within academic institutions, we adopted a more inclusive definition of “early career” to reflect the challenging and often precarious academic context of the Global South. While considering a general period of up to 10 years after completion of a PhD, our expanded ECR category included participants with longer post-PhD experience who had published no more than one article in an international journal, as well as participants with extensive research experience who were nearing completion of lengthy PhD programs.

This flexible approach acknowledged that education and career trajectories in Global South academic contexts often differ significantly from Global North patterns due to resource constraints, limited institutional support, and fewer publishing opportunities (Collyer, 2016). By broadening our eligibility criteria while maintaining focus on emerging voices, we aimed to create genuine opportunities for scholars who might otherwise be excluded from international academic development programs despite their research expertise and potential contributions to the field.

Following the call for participants, we received over 50 applications and selected 20 participants. However, for various reasons, only 14 attended the workshop. Having achieved budgetary savings, we contacted our funders and requested permission to use the surplus funds to support local participants. We were therefore able to open participation to academics from both the host institution and other local universities, reaching a total of 50 participants in attendance, representing 11 countries (Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda, South Africa and Uganda), the majority of women, which enhanced the workshop experience for all.

Because several participants were not native English speakers, we approached the process mindful of potential language barriers that might make it harder to convey the significance of their research or to navigate both the formal and informal expectations of publishing in mainstream international journals. We were also aware from the 2019 experience that ECRs and especially those whose English was their second language, were particularly susceptible to predatory publications as highlighted by Lund, Wang, Shamsi, Abdullahi, Awojobi, Borgohain and Yusuf (2021). We therefore embedded information on predatory journals within the program.

Committed to a concrete end-result, our workshop architecture centred on progressive output development, with each session strategically designed to build toward participants’ individual and collective contributions. Rather than allowing valuable insights and collaborations to dissipate after the event, we structured activities to ensure that intellectual labour and collaborative energy would translate into concrete scholarly products.

We designed virtual sessions as preparatory pathways to the main three-day in-person workshop that was to be held in Meru, Kenya. This progressive timeline required participants to develop manuscripts in stages, with each phase linked to the culminating event. Participants were expected to submit strong paper drafts based on guidelines provided during the virtual sessions and before arriving at the in-person workshop—an approach that proved highly effective.

The virtual introduction sessions were followed by submission of first drafts. We provided extensive feedback to enable participants to produce improved versions, culminating in a collective peer-to-peer review process during the workshop. This methodology ensured that the project would deliver concrete outcomes—particularly publications by participants—rather than serving merely as a ‘capacity building’ encounter.

We incorporated structured writing time and peer-to-peer feedback mechanisms that enabled participants to advance their work substantially. By embedding output production into the workshop framework itself, participants left not just with new networks and ideas, but with substantive progress on publications or other scholarly contributions that could advance their careers and amplify their voices in global academic conversations.

This intentional design acknowledged the unique challenges facing scholars from the Global South, as highlighted by Lund et al. (2021). Our methodology recognized that academic outputs require dedicated time, supportive environments, and collective accountability structures that are rarely provided in traditional workshop formats. The approach also responded to resource constraints many participants face in their home institutions, where dedicated writing time and collaborative support for publication development may be limited (Lor, 2023). By providing these essential elements within the workshop structure, we created conditions for meaningful scholarly output that participants could sustain beyond the event itself.

4. THE WORKSHOP JOURNEY

The ‘Visibilising’ workshop took place from 19 to 21 March 2025. The Workshop opened with an inspiring presentation by a Global South ECR based in the UK on “The Politics of Knowledge Production in Peace, Conflict and Security Studies.” Drawing from his research (Adeogoke & Oni, 2018) examining academic journals and geographical representation in the field, the talk highlighted the core rationale for the workshop and raised critical questions about knowledge production processes, which were further discussed over the following days.

An important component of the workshop was input from three journal editors representing different perspectives and geographic regions. Two editors participated from established Europe-based journals: a female practitioner-academic and a male professor, both of whom spoke via video conference. The third editor, a male representative from a newly established Latin American journal, contributed through a pre-recorded video^[2] presentation and supplementary notes for participants.

Given the different backgrounds and positionalities, the editors offered participants a multifaceted understanding of academic publishing that would have been impossible with a single editorial perspective. The practitioner-academic editor consistently brought conversations back to real-world applications, while the academic editor pushed participants to deepen their theoretical foundations and strengthen their methodological approaches. The views from the Global South editor reinforced some of the key aspects discussed by the other editors, but he also stressed how the journal he edited seeks to provide space for alternative narratives that often did not have the proper space in journals in the Global North. This included accepting different types of papers, such as research notes and papers focusing on microscale case studies.

Statistical evidence shows that Global South manuscript submissions face lower acceptance rates compared to those from the Global North, though identifying the underlying causes remains difficult (Lor, 2023). Global South authors must also invest considerably more emotional and intellectual effort to publish in journals that are readily accessible to their Global North counterparts, all while working within severe resource constraints. These disparities may result from editorial bias, quality concerns, or other factors such as research focus and methodological approaches—issues that may not reflect the actual quality of the manuscript itself. For inexperienced ECRs, manuscript rejection can be particularly demoralizing.

The burden of navigating unfamiliar processes and requirements such as publishing in the different journalistic styles can create intellectual strain that may erode ECRs’ confidence, stifle their creativity, challenge their identity, and affect their emotional resilience as highlighted by Naidu, Cartmill, Swanepoel and Whitehead (2024). Therefore, a key feature of the workshop was a session providing a step-by-step process of the submission and peer-review process grounded on the experience and real examples of the facilitators. This ranged from understanding editorial preferences, reviewer feedback, managing the emotional toll, dealing with impostor syndrome, and finding the right journal match. It emphasized how rejections, while difficult, can be valuable learning experiences that contribute to scholarly growth and improved writing.

This was further practiced during an interactive peer-review session, where participants were divided into three mixed groups containing early career researchers from different countries working on papers with varied themes. In each group the advanced draft papers were discussed, with all participants acting as peer reviewers, evaluating papers using standard academic criteria, such as structure, methodology, and other key elements of scholarly writing. This session received the highest praise from participants, who requested that future workshops allocate more time to this activity. They valued both receiving feedback on their own work and providing constructive criticism to others. Unlike harsh real-world rejection processes that often lack proper feedback, this exercise created a supportive, constructive environment focused on improvement rather than acceptance or rejection.

Another valuable form of peer learning came from 2019 workshop alumni who served as session facilitators. These former participants shared their post-workshop journeys, detailing publications, collaborations, and successful grant applications that originated from their 2019 workshop experience. This session proved highly motivating for current participants. Unlike theoretical discussions about potential benefits, alumni provided concrete examples of career advancement, showing participants the workshop’s real outcomes. They demonstrated how initial connections formed during the workshop evolved into lasting professional relationships, joint publications, and collaborative research projects spanning multiple countries. Hearing from peers who had recently faced similar challenges made the advice more credible and actionable. The alumni mapped out specific strategies they had used post-workshop, providing participants with clear pathways for leveraging their workshop experience.

Besides the sessions focusing on publishing, we included in the program a couple of sessions devoted to grant and funding applications. This discussion had been included and was a favourite in the 2019 event, and it was premised on the available evidence that suggests that ECRs are the minority recipients of international research grants (Tijssen & Kraemer-Mbula, 2018), which contribute significantly to knowledge production asymmetries. These disparities aren’t just about who gets to do research, but also what research gets done and how it’s valued. This leads to a vicious cycle that reinforces existing global and local inequalities.

We therefore included a dedicated session on writing successful grant applications, aimed at helping participants identify what constitutes a successful grant proposal. Next, participants were organized into panels to review actual grant proposals, enabling them to evaluate applications based on merit and quality. The session concluded with a facilitated discussion on lessons learned.

We were mindful of growing concerns that reliance on Global North research funding may inadvertently reflect funders’ interests, potentially perpetuating the dominance of Global North perspectives (Awumbila, Kandilige & Setrana, 2022; Chankseliani, 2023). For example, Mkandawire (2005) noted that African academic publishing had been shaped primarily by external donors and foreign institutions, which operate according to their own institutional priorities and utilize their existing publication infrastructures. A dynamic which creates a systemic challenge where publication success becomes tied not to research quality or local relevance, but to conformity with Northern academic interests and priorities. To address this challenge, we introduced participants to alternative funding sources beyond traditional UK and Global North opportunities.

Finally, drawing on our own experience of publishing in high-impact journals (2021), a key element of the workshop was to incubate a peer-to-peer support network for ECRs scholars from the Global South, who could share similar experiences and collaborate on future research projects. Therefore, to foster collaboration, on the last day we split the participants into three thematic groups to discuss possible avenues of collaboration. Various researchers from Meru University joined these sessions, where issues related to health, education, technology and others were discussed along Peace and Conflict issues, leading to many ideas of transdisciplinary collaborative projects. Moreover, thinking of the long-term effects of the workshop, and aiming to expand these reflections to a wider audience, after the event we started a Global South Peace & Conflict Studies Network, which very soon reached over 900 members from all over the Global South.

5.FEEDBACK FROM PARTICIPANTS AND SHORT-TERM IMPACT

The general feedback of the workshop was overall very positive. Based on 21 responses to a Feedback Questionnaire, 100% responded that the workshop met their initial expectations and agreed that the content of the event was relevant for their professional learning goals, with one of the participants stating that he “acquired more tips and enthusiasm for publishing in international journals”.

The reference to enthusiasm is not trivial. High academic standards are often accompanied by harsh and brutal criticism, leading many young academics to self-sabotage, anxiety and even depression (see for example Forrester, 2021; Sang, Powell, Finkel & Richards, 2015). While we did not explicitly plan this in our workshop proposal, all through the process, and given our positionalities, we were very concerned with making this not only a “learning environment” but a welcoming and caring one. It was, thus, very gratifying to read responses that made a testament to this. One participant, for example, listed on the most positive parts of the workshop “knowing how to approach article rejection, pick yourself up and start off again”, while another mentioned increased “clarity and confidence in academic writing”, factors that reflect an important degree of personal empowerment.

Relatedly, the feeling of belonging to a common cohort of Global South was referred to in the comments as a positive aspect, as in the following statement: “Honourable mention for me is the overall angle of the workshop that acknowledges challenges and gaps for us researchers in the Global South. It makes the whole experience genuine, realistic, and in a way serving a greater purpose for me.”

It seems to us that the emotional aspect —increased confidence and encouragement— was strongly linked to the sharing process among peers who live in different countries but are exposed to similar conditions in terms of academic challenges. In the words of a participant, “The most valuable part of the workshop for me was the connection with other participants—being able to find common ground, share professional challenges, and exchange encouragement about the future.”

Besides this connection, there was also recognition on how important it was to be exposed to “new literature, fresh theoretical perspectives”, as provided through the discussions in the context of this very heterogenous group. Here, it is worth noticing the mention of “the diversity among participants, especially the representation of women scholars”, which was also commented verbally throughout the event.

Another aspect positively evaluated was related to the actual content and learning process. Verbal and written feedback showed that participants found extremely valuable the different sessions related to how to structure a paper, the editorial views of the process and, in particular, the peer-review experience, which offered them concrete, constructive, and actionable suggestions to improve their papers. Also, there was reference to the first two online sessions. As noted in the evaluation form, “The first online session is useful because if participants come from practitioner background, or haven’t been writing for quite some time, this takes us to the basics of writing with references from papers from the facilitators”. Similar comments were provided regarding the grant application sessions. The fact that the sessions were anchored in real life experiences of the leading cohort, and the direct engagement of the journal editors was particularly appreciated.

A third strength of the workshop, according to participants, was the opportunity for networking. As they shared their work, it was an opportunity to build bridges and think of future partnerships, strengthening the instances of South-South collaboration, one of the key intents of this workshop. Some participants highlighted that group exercises with collaborative feedback and resource sharing were particularly effective in broadening their academic horizons.

When asked about what could have been better and/or improved, a recurring theme was the need for more time. Many felt that adding one or two extra days would allow deeper engagement with peer review, participant presentations, and collaborative exercises. A dedicated day for paper revision—after discussions and feedback—was seen as especially valuable for strengthening academic writing and grant proposals. Relatedly, there was a demand for more focused on hands-on activities and individualized support, either another day for peer-review or an exercise in writing a grant application. This call for more showed how the role of mentoring is important and appreciated.

Interestingly, one suggestion was the organisation of an event targeting women scholars, particularly those working in peace and security within conflict-affected regions of the Global South, addressing gender-specific barriers and strengthening professional support networks for underrepresented groups. This is an important reminder that even within the Global South there are other domains of asymmetries and under-representation.

While the feedback was extremely positive, assessing the long-term effects of the workshop is a more complicated exercise. In the next section we delve into some of the challenges we encountered during the process and the ways we found to address them (a process that is ongoing).

6. CHALLENGES AND LESSON LEARNED

The first challenge regarding this process lies in its very intent and format. As Global South women scholars with a foot in the Global North we were aware of the knowledge trap long before starting this process. We share a similar educational path, starting our education in the Global South and eventually pursuing a PhD in the Global North, further legitimising the models and epistemologies that we critique. We are part of a system that we want to change and yet we are compelled to change it by first being legitimated by it. We feel the pressure to publish in high ranked journals even though we criticise many of them on the grounds of representation and for being trapped in mainstream epistemological and methodological frameworks. That said, we also publish in the Global South, we are familiar with the concerns, views and conditions of academic life in the Global South, and thus recognise the potential and limitations of both arenas.

Navigating these two worlds we understand that the path to further collaboration and increasing representation of different voices must be based on constructive critique and mutual collaboration. Understanding the mainstream system and how it operates is important, as much as it is important to promote a change that reverberates at the top. Back to Lederach’s analogy, it became clear to us that the importance of “pollinating”, especially among ECRs, as a way to spread “critical yeast”. In Lederach’s (2025, par. 19) words, “Enduring change always finds its roots in the quality of the circulatory system – in the thousand conversations, actions, and innovations in a thousand places that stitch the web capable of resisting the narrow tyranny of bubbled isolation, violence, and oppression”. We believe that ECRs are especially suited to help spread this “critical yeast”.

As one of us has recently discussed (Njeri, 2025), ECRs occupy a distinctive position from which to question established hierarchies of knowledge. To begin with, many ECRs come from the Global South or from historically marginalised communities that have long been treated as objects—rather than creators—of scholarship on development, peace, and conflict. Their lived experience and cultural understanding can profoundly reshape how problems and solutions in these fields are conceived.

ECRs also tend to unsettle methodological conventions. Less tied to entrenched academic traditions, they often experiment with innovative research designs, community-based practices, and indigenous knowledge systems. By challenging prevailing definitions of what constitutes “valid” research, they help broaden and diversify scholarly methods. This perspective fosters more reciprocal collaborations: instead of reproducing extractive models that study communities from the outside, ECRs are inclined to work with those communities. Having themselves often been research subjects, they value co-creation and shared authority.

Furthermore, they make strategic use of digital technologies, social media, and alternative publication avenues to bypass traditional gatekeepers and share knowledge directly with those most affected. Once inside academic institutions, ECRs can collectively press for systemic change, including fairer hiring practices, more inclusive curricula, and decolonised approaches to knowledge production.

As any group of people, ECRs are also very heterogeneous and we do not mean to ignore the fact that many may also reproduce epistemological hierarchies. Our proposition is that, overall, because they are at the beginning of their academic career, there is room for more flexibility as compared to established academics who have consolidated their careers working with mainstream epistemologies.

That said, this privileged position of ECRs must be nurtured to become effective. On this we highlight two interrelated more practical challenges. First, one pressing difficulty is guaranteeing that these emerging scholars receive the institutional backing and material resources needed to keep their transformative efforts alive as their careers progress. It is here where robust cooperation between the Global North and South is essential to counter epistemic injustice and to create more genuinely inclusive systems of support. Our own writing workshop, for example, was possible only because of a British Academy grant. However, these collaborations must be reoriented to respond more fully to the priorities of the Global South. As shared by several participants during the workshop, often instances of cooperation take place in a very asymmetrical way, where the Global South institution is called to participate given a requirement of specific calls for funding; however, they are not equally engaged in the terms of the project design and ownership. For knowledge hierarchies to be reversed, academics from the South must participate as equal partners in a process rooted in fairness and mutuality, rather than being brought in merely to satisfy the requirements of initiatives largely shaped by the Global North.

Funding these types of workshops can be an effective way to support ECRs and working towards establishing new avenues of equal partnerships. Another challenge, however, is to sustain momentum and make these efforts endure in the long run, that is to nourish the process of pollination, weaving a solid network. The long-term effects of this workshop were one of our concerns since the beginning, so one of the outputs we envisioned was the creation of a network. As such, once the workshop was over, we established the Global South Peace and Conflict Studies Network, building on a Google Group that began as a social-media outreach. To our surprise, nearly 300 people joined within a single week, and the network has since grown to 923 members spanning the Global South. The community is steadily evolving, and conversations are underway about strengthening South-South as well as South-North collaboration. One of our earliest projects is a biweekly bulletin designed to showcase members’ work and help us become familiar with each other’s research. The path ahead is long, but like bees and spiders we continue to build—pollinating ideas and weaving an ever-expanding, truly inclusive web of knowledge.

7.CONCLUSION

As ECRs ourselves with multiple identities, this collaboration and project has provided us with an opportunity to engage in a reflexive journey. Attia and Edge (2017) contribute important understanding to reflexivity concepts, especially through their framework of the developmental process they call ‘Be(com)ing reflexive researchers.’ They identify reflexivity as encompassing two interrelated dimensions: anticipatory and reflective reflexivity (see also Edge, 2011).

Our work on this project mirrors the process whereby a “researcher consciously steps back from action in order to theorise what is taking place, and also stepping up to be an active part of that contextualised action” (Attia & Edge, 2017, p. 35). Although not explicitly planned, this process of stepping back and stepping up naturally occurred during intervals between activities, with the writing process providing opportunities for critical reflection.

This reflexive process has revealed both the potential and the contradictions inherent in our work. The ‘Visibilising project’ exemplifies what we have termed the “knowledge trap”—the seemingly unavoidable pressure to engage with dominant academic systems while simultaneously attempting to transform them. Our analysis shows that small-scale interventions like the Meru workshop can generate meaningful outcomes, but only when understood as part of a broader, sustained effort toward epistemic justice.

Drawing on Lederach’s (2025) metaphor of bees pollinating and spiders weaving, our experience suggests that incremental, relational approaches to challenging knowledge hierarchies have merit. The workshop’s capacity to build participants’ confidence, foster South-South collaborations, and produce concrete outputs indicates that ECRs can serve as pollinators of alternative knowledge systems. The enthusiasm and sense of belonging participants expressed, alongside the establishment of the Global South Peace and Conflict Studies Network, suggests these efforts can create effects that extend beyond individual capacity-building.

However, our analysis also exposes the structural limitations of such initiatives. The persistent challenges we encountered—from securing balanced editorial representation to addressing deep-seated inequalities in research funding and institutional support—demonstrate that individual workshops, however well-designed, cannot single-handedly dismantle entrenched epistemic hierarchies. The very fact that our workshop relied on Global North funding while simultaneously critiquing Global North dominance in knowledge production exemplifies the complex terrain Global South scholars must navigate.

The feedback from participants reveals a tension between their appreciation for learning to navigate existing publishing systems and their awareness of the limitations of simply increasing representation without fundamentally challenging the structures that determine what counts as legitimate knowledge. This tension reflects the broader challenge facing PCS—how to decolonise the field while remaining engaged with institutions that maintain colonial legacies.

Our experience points to several insights for future initiatives aimed at challenging knowledge asymmetries. First, the emotional and relational dimensions of academic work must be central to any transformative effort. The confidence-building and community-forming aspects of our workshop proved as valuable as technical skills transfer, indicating that epistemic justice requires both structural and affective change. Second, supporting ECRs as agents of transformation requires sustained institutional commitment beyond one-off activities. Third, genuine North-South collaboration must move beyond extractive models toward partnerships where Global South scholars have equal agency in defining research priorities and methodological approaches.

The establishment and rapid growth of the Global South Peace and Conflict Studies Network demonstrates the demand for alternative spaces of knowledge production and exchange. This network represents a form of horizontal “weaving” that creates new connections outside traditional hierarchical structures. However, sustaining such networks requires addressing the material constraints Global South scholars face—limited funding, heavy teaching loads, and pressure to publish in high-impact journals (2021) that may not value their perspectives.

Our experience points to the need for multiple, interconnected strategies. Individual scholars and small groups can continue working as pollinators, spreading critical perspectives and challenging dominant narratives from within existing institutions. Simultaneously, more systematic efforts are needed to create alternative publication venues, funding mechanisms, and evaluation criteria that centre Global South knowledge and experiences. The success of regional journals mentioned by our Latin American editor offers one model, though these efforts require greater support and recognition.

Whether the knowledge trap can ever truly be broken remains an open question. Our experience suggests that while complete escape may be impossible given current global academic structures, meaningful transformation is achievable through persistent, collective action. The key lies in recognising that challenging epistemic hierarchies requires both strategic engagement with existing systems and the creation of alternative spaces that operate according to different logics.

Our contribution to this debate is concrete but modest: we have demonstrated that carefully designed workshops can serve as catalysts for broader change, particularly when they combine skills development with community building and critical consciousness-raising. The success of our participants in forming ongoing collaborations and the growth of our network demonstrates that even small interventions can have amplifying effects when they tap into existing desires for more inclusive knowledge production.

Ultimately, unsettling epistemic hierarchies in PCS requires what Lederach (2025, par. 19) describes as “the thousand conversations, actions, and innovations in a thousand places that stitch the web capable of resisting the narrow tyranny of bubbled isolation, violence, and oppression.” Our workshop represents one thread in this larger web, showing that while individual initiatives cannot transform entire systems, they can create conditions for broader movements toward epistemic justice.

The path ahead requires sustained commitment from scholars, institutions, and funding bodies to support more equitable knowledge production. Our experience confirms that ECRs from the Global South, when provided with appropriate support and platforms, can serve as agents of change. As we continue to pollinate ideas and weave networks of collaboration, we remain committed to the incremental but necessary work of creating a more inclusive and dynamic landscape of knowledge production in peace and conflict studies.

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Notes

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Cómo citar / citation: Njeri, S., Maschietto, R.H. & Bueno, N. (2025). Unsettling epistemic hierarchies in peace and conflict studies: the role of early career scholars and south-south collaboration. Estudios de la Paz y el Conflicto, Revista Latinoamericana, Volumen 7, Número 13, 148-165. https://doi.org/10.5377/rlpc.v7i13.21291

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