Paper details

Paper authors	Dr Rebecca Golden Timsar
In panel on	Teaching Global Humanitarian Assistance in Turbulent Times: Challenges and Opportunities in Higher Education
Paper presenter(s) will be presenting	In-Person & Online

Abstract

Through an investigation of the operational dynamics of this organization, the paper endeavours to shed light on the challenges of advancing historical knowledge frontiers within MSF and higher educational institutional frameworks using the MSF speaking out case studies (SOCS).

The SOCS use key information sources and interviews of MSF volunteers’ written and oral recollections with intensive focus on controversies and dilemmas, without judging the quality of decisions made to write a memory competing voices. Recently, these SOCS e-books began a transformation to e-learning tools (podcasts, synchronous thematic training modules, and timelines) as part of the efforts to democratize learning, diffuse power, broaden knowledge access to SOCS materials both internally and externally for humanitarian practitioners, and for the generation of academic debates on the articulation of speaking out with humanitarian challenges and ambiguities. However, the efforts at providing digital access to the SOCS literature and practice has not necessarily meant (re)production or circulation of humanitarian epistemologies in the global higher education context, leading us to re-evaluate this process.

This paper seeks to explore the following questions: How is historical knowledge of speaking out in humanitarian crises produced and circulated? How are these historicities decolonized and democratized? What are the limitations of localizing humanitarian knowledge production and memory? Is digital learning democratizing? How can digital tools be utilized for sustainable decolonialization? What competing interests are circulating?

Back