PaTHES Conference, 2027

8 – 10 June 2027
STIAS Institute – Stellenbosch University, South Africa

Re-imagining knowledge for the 21^st Century

See the conference website here.

Universities across the world are confronting profound questions about their purpose, legitimacy, and future. Amid rapid technological change, the rise of artificial intelligence, growing social inequalities, democratic fragilities (especially academic freedom), ecological crises, political polarisation,  tensions between institutional neutrality and social advocacy, and calls for decolonisation and transformation, the very foundations of the university are increasingly being called into question. 

Central to the arising debates is the question of knowledge. What counts as legitimate knowledge? Who determines its value? Whose knowledge is recognised, and whose is rendered invisible? What forms of knowledge are privileged within universities, and what forms continue to be marginalised or excluded? More fundamentally, what kinds of knowledge are required to respond to the complex social, political, technological, ecological, and ethical challenges of the twenty-first century?

These are not merely epistemological questions. They are simultaneously ethical, political, educational, and institutional. Universities do not simply produce knowledge; they legitimise particular ways of knowing, shape intellectual traditions, and determine whose voices are heard, whose experiences are believed, and whose contributions are recognised. The knowledge they teach, research, and disseminate influences public policy, professional practice, civic life, and democratic cultures. Decisions about what counts as knowledge are therefore never merely academic. They shape relations of power, inclusion and exclusion, justice and injustice, and ultimately the futures that universities help to imagine and sustain.

Knowledge is neither neutral nor universal (Harding, 1991; Haraway, 2013; Cross & Govender, 2021). Fricker’s (2007) epistemic injustice has demonstrated how individuals and communities can be wronged specifically in their capacity as knowers, raising profound questions about credibility, recognition, exclusion, and voice (Fricker, 2007). Decolonial scholarship has similarly questioned the dominance of Eurocentric epistemologies and called for an ecology of knowledges that acknowledges the plurality of intellectual traditions while resisting the invisibilisation of knowledges from the Global South (De Sousa Santos, 2015; Bhambra et al, 2018). Such debates compel universities to reconsider not only whose knowledge matters, but also the epistemological assumptions upon which their knowledge projects are built. At the same time, universities face competing demands concerning the purposes of knowledge itself. The longstanding tension between the humanities and the sciences has acquired renewed significance in an era increasingly dominated by STEM disciplines, technological innovation, economic competitiveness, and employability agendas (Willis et al, 2018). 

These tensions resonate with Habermas’ (1972) distinction between technical, practical, and emancipatory knowledge interests. While universities have historically cultivated multiple forms of knowing, there is growing concern that instrumental knowledge – knowledge valued for its efficiency, utility, and economic return – has come to dominate contemporary higher education. What becomes of critical, interpretive, ethical, and emancipatory forms of knowledge when universities are increasingly evaluated through rankings, productivity metrics, innovation indices, and graduate employability?

Conference focus:  

Yet, an even more fundamental question confronts the contemporary university: What, if anything, is the value of knowledge in the twenty-first century? In an age characterised by artificial intelligence, algorithmic decision-making, instantaneous access to information, performative metrics, and the commodification of higher education, the intrinsic value of knowledge appears increasingly fragile. Knowledge is frequently judged less by its capacity to deepen understanding than by its usefulness, marketability, and measurable impact. The question is no longer simply What do we know? but increasingly What use is knowledge? Has AI fundamentally altered our relationship with knowledge, or does it compel us to recover and reaffirm those dimensions of knowing that cannot be reduced to information processing or computational capacity?

These questions invite deep philosophical challenges. Can the value of knowledge be retrieved and strengthened as a public, intellectual, and democratic good? Should it be? Or does our contemporary moment require us to rethink knowledge altogether – to re-understand its purposes, forms, and value in ways that respond to the uncertainties of the twenty-first century? To rethink the idea of knowledge also includes rethinking universities that are ‘capable of convening various publics in new forms of assemblies that become points of convergence of and platforms for the redistribution of different kinds of knowledges’ (Mbembe, 2015: 16).

This conference invites scholars, researchers, educators, students, and practitioners to engage critically with the philosophical, theoretical, ethical, political, and epistemological questions surrounding knowledge in higher education. It seeks to create a space for examining not only the changing nature of universities, but also the changing nature, value, purposes, and futures of knowledge itself.

References

• Bhambra, G.K.,  Gebrial, D. & Nişancıoğlu, K. (2018) Decolonising  the University. London: Pluto Press. 
• Cross, M. & Govender, L. (2021). Researching higher education in Africa as a process of meaning-making: Epistemological and theoretical considerations. Journal of Education, (83): 14-33
• De Sousa Santos B. (2015). Epistemologies of the south: Justice against epistemicide. Routledge.
• Fricker, M. (2007). Epistemic injustice: power and the ethics of knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Habermas, J. (1972). Knowledge and Human Interests. J. J. Shapiro (trans.). London: Heinemann.
• Haraway D. (2013). Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Women, science, and technology , 455–472. 
• Harding S. (1991). Whose science? Whose knowledge? Thinking from women’s lives. Cornell University Press.
• Mbembe, A. (2015) Decolonizing knowledge and the question of the archive. Public Lectures, Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER), University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg). 
• Willis, M., Castell, J. & Waddington, K. (2018) Humanities and science collaboration isn’t well understood, but letting off STEAM is not the answer. https://theconversation.com/humanities-and-science-collaboration-isnt-well-understood-but-letting-off-steam-is-not-the-answer-92146