LIS research methodology: decolonial perspectives informing knowledge of African communities

Abstract

‘Information’ as conceptualized in the discipline of library and information science (LIS) is not neutral as LIS increasingly, in the current digital information age and within a reflective and epistemological framework, critically engages historical, cultural, social, economic, and political forces that interact with information. Such forces may use information to advance dominant epistemic agendas and hence the need for LIS researchers, students, practitioners, and other relevant stakeholders to critically interrogate and even disrupt such forces in their curation of information for use in research, practice, theory development, policy application, and so on. It is in such a transformative context that the proposed presentation interrogates LIS research methodology, contextualized in African decolonial space, as a heuristic tool in LIS curricula for a more informed understanding of communities in Africa served by library and information services. Existing LIS research methodology literature, as little as there is, tend to emanate from the global north and reflect western research epistemology; and do not address decolonial approaches and methods to critically engage traditional scholarship and dominant western knowledge systems in LIS research. Hence the purpose of this presentation/paper is to address the broader philosophical, ontological, and epistemological issues that inform the research process, but specifically capturing African decolonial perspectives.