This blog post was written by Cari Beth Head, a participant in Decolonizing Development with Farah Mahesri of FNM Advising in February 2023. Sign up for the next session of this course here.

When I signed up for Decolonizing Development, I was looking for an opportunity to clarify my own perspectives - and those bubbling up around me - on decolonization in the context of development. I fall somewhere between research and practice, with an interest in measurement as a form of social and epistemic power on the one hand, and an interest in the implications for monitoring and evaluation in development on the other.

So, of course, I have been pleasantly overwhelmed by – and somewhat suspicious of – the many intersecting definitions and discussions of decolonization. I wanted to understand decolonization in the context of so many other power-aware approaches, what decolonization has and could look like in development, and frankly, whether decolonization in development was simply an oxymoron.

I would absolutely recommend this course to anyone else curious about, committed to, or hopeful for shifting power dynamics in development sectors, organizations, or practices – and more broadly. Farah, in one of the most clear and compelling courses I have taken, took concepts that had been somewhat fuzzy for me, and placed them in conversation, context, and most importantly, history.

Many of the topics we covered in Decolonizing Development have deeply informed my subsequent work. I’m able to distinguish meaningfully and critically between many different frameworks and buzzwords, including decolonization, liberation, localization, and equity. I now have concrete tools – guiding questions, a deeper sense of history, other lenses – that I have used in many different contexts, discussions, projects and collaborations, to analyze and address power dynamics.

I continue to rely regularly on the language, resources, materials and examples the Decolonizing Development course made available to me. And because Farah was so wonderful about making these concepts real, grounding us in every day experiences and actively pushing us to apply these tools in our work and worlds, I am also better able to identify people, projects, and processes with liberatory and decolonizing potential, and to celebrate our progress along the way.