Higher Seminar in Media and Communication Studies with Winston Mano, University of Westminster.

Decoloniality is key to centring epistemes from previously marginalised contexts. This is an important step for helping to reset the epistemic boundaries of existing knowledge and practice. It is an urgent imperative for geopolitical reimagination of academic boundaries and a necessary challenge to the ways in which hegemonic geopolitical narratives are established. Using Afrokological heuristic tool, the paper pushes for decolonising media and communication studies, considering how different worlds can coexist, not submitted in one reality, but in incommensurability. In this sense, Afrokology aims not just to move discussions away from the uncritical and wholesale embrace or complete rejection of received knowledges but to identify the incompleteness of dominant global North paradigms. This emphasis on pluriversality is a key aspect of Afrokology’s connectedness to decoloniality, which includes conscious acts of reclamation and validation. Afrokology is deployed as a participatory, transdisciplinary and responsive framework underpinned by key values of conviviality and incompleteness, with emphasis on accommodating so-called “other” knowledges. Afrokology is invoked as a coalescing heuristic tool to underpin work in media and communication in Africa and the global South.

Winston Mano is an Associate Professor/Reader and a member of the University of Westminster’s top-rated Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI). He is also a Course Leader for the MA in Media and Development and the Founder/Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of African Media Studies. Mano joined the University of Westminster's Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI) from the University of Zimbabwe in 2000 where he was a Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication. Winston Mano's has edited and published in (2022) Media Ownership in Africa in the Digital Age Challenges, Continuity and Change, (with Loubna El Mkaouar); (2021) Routledge Handbook of African Media and Communication Studies (with viola c. milton); (2020) Social Media and Elections in Africa (with Martin N. Ndlela), Vol 1 & 2: https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030326814; (2019) International Media Development: Historical Perspectives and New Frontiers (with Nicholas Benequista, Susan Abbott, Paul Rothman) https://www.peterlang.com/view/title/65486?format=HC,
He studied in Zimbabwe, Norway and Britain.

It is possible to participate in the seminar both live on campus or remotely via Zoom (see the attached link). If you have any questions, please contact Saga Hansén (contact details below).