Hi Everyone,
Greetings! I am excited to share that the workshop Collectively Situated Knowledge: A decolonial research method for constructing collective auto-narratives and positionalities, will be provided online in November! Let’s co-create, unlearn, and remember. If this kind of transformational work resonates with you, then this is an invitation to join us! If you feel called, we’d love to have you. Let’s work collectively to heal our colonial wounds and create liberatory knowledge and practice. 
All of the info is below:

Workshop Title: Collectively Situated Knowledge: A decolonial research method for constructing collective auto-narratives and positionalities
To Apply: Please fill out the form here- https://share.mayfirst.org/apps/forms/s/9sxrFz2ZiLbLttWb43oy9tnb
Application Deadline: Until all spaces are filled.
Payment Deadline: November 13th, 2025
Dates: Mondays and Tuesdays November 16th- December 1st, 2025
Time: All sessions are Mondays and Tuesdays:
– 9hrs to 11hrs, Mexico City Time,
– 16hrs-18hrs Central European Time,
– 20:30hrs-22:30hrs India Standard Time
Location: ONLINE


**SPACE IS LIMITED**

THIS COURSE FOCUSES ON CREATING RESEARCH METHODS THROUGH COLLECTIVE PRACTICE


IT IS TIME TO CENTER COLLECTIVE THOUGHT AND PRACTICE IN RESEARCH
This workshop addresses two principal discrepancies that arise in the creation of scholar/activist knowledge with indigenous, rural and organized urban communities that seek to create a decolonial research methodologies. Through participatory practices of knowledge exchange we will first work to incorporate collective forms of knowledge creation drawing on the decision-making structures of community assemblies present in many rural and indigenous communities around the world and then, we will explore collective auto-narrative as a research method. In this process we will dismantle the construction and practice of situating knowledge in order to create collective positionalities that reflect the construction of the self within the collective contexts that we inhabit. By exploring collective forms of agency in knowledge creation we will delve into the multiplicitous protaganisms that conglomerate in creating praxis and have the potential to resist epistemicide.


THIS COURSE WILL COVER

-Methods and analyses for creating decolonial economic projects.

-Understanding ourselves as situated knowers and how to position ourselves collectively.

-Unlearning colonial paradigms of research and knowledge production.

-Rethinking value, exchange, and labor in research.

-El Cambalache as an example of an anti-capitalist and non-hierarchical research project that practiced collective auto-narrative.


FOR WHOM?
The practice, research and theories of non-capitalist social power included in this course were developed by and for all of us in order to bring about social change. For this reason, it is designed for people interested in creating, practicing and collectively researching noncapitalist and anti- colonial social power to be carried out in their places of residence or research. Everyone is invited to participate – women, people with diasporic heritages, indigenous people and LBGTQ++ are especially invited.


CALENDAR
All sessions are Mondays and Tuesdays:
– 9hrs to 11hrs, Mexico City Time,
– 16hrs-18hrs Central European Time,
– 20:30hrs-22:30hrs India Standard Time


Monday November 16th-
Introductions, Remembering Knowledge Beyond Extraction

Tuesday November 17th-
Positionality, Power, and Partial Perspectives- Making them Collective

Monday November 23nd-
Collective Knowledge as Method

Tuesday November 24th-
Persistent Relationships: collectivity and communality: Non-Capitalist Ethics of Research through Collective Autonarrative

Monday November 30th-
Practicing Collective Auto-narrative and Story as Resistance

Tuesday December 1st-
Living the Method — Research as Relationship and Collective Creation

COURSE DESCRIPTION
Decolonial methodologies call for shifting the power relationships within the construction of knowledge. This involves not only recognizing the obfuscation of the persistence and value of the great multitude of epistemes present in the majority world but also the consequential urgency to shatter the hierarchy of intersectional structural violences that deny the inherent diversity, wealth and abundance of these ontologies. The disparate nature of epistemicide within academia simultaneously seeks to innovate in the creation and practice of institutionalized minority world forms of knowledge while silencing, devaluing and ultimately eliminating the epistemic polyphony present in the majority world. In order to shift this dynamic new forms of research methods are necessary. In order to create new methodologies we, as researchers, are pushed to transform ourselves and our systems of valuing.
In Capitalism social power is constructed through the acquisition of wealth through commodities and currency. Access to wealth is limited through intersectional structural violence across geographies which consequentially restrict access to social power and, as such, diverse epistemes are devalued. Many pre-hispanic empires and now, indigenous communities in the Americas have persistently functioned with moneyless economies that are sustained through collective work, exchange and thought. However, these forms of thought and practice have no value in a capitalist/colonial economy because they have no monetary value. These forms of indigenous praxis create non-capitalist social power which is the most available form of social power in the world.
Ethnography constructs knowledge through the investigation of ethnic expression, experience and is now recognized as intercultural research across epistemologies and ontologies. Ground-up approaches to ethnography such as photo-voice, community cinema, community radio, varied forms of artistic expression and podcasting seek to decenter the investigator while privileging the agency of research participants in the co-creation of knowledge. Meanwhile, beyond academia, social media around the world has created a platform for people from all walks of life to express themselves and their ontological experiences. Simultaneously, indigenous and rural communities in the Americas (and around the world) employ the structure of community assemblies to create knowledge about themselves, their context and resolve problems that they face.
The push towards collective knowledge creation amplifies the imperative to recognize the polyphonic nature of life on Earth. In order to audaciously create knowledge about resistance to coloniality and the expressions of flourishing in spite of all of the violence and chaos that greets us in 2025 academic practice would do well to incorporate and recognize the collective nature of our own experience, the interwoven immersion that accompanies us through our fields of research, our protagonism and that of others as we mutually influence and transform ourselves
and each other in the co-creation of knowledge. The community assembly as method for decision-making and knowledge creation simultaneously recognizes the incredible strength to persist in cultural maintenance and innovation inherent in those communities whose epistemes and territories are under constant attack through the mechanisms of capitalism/coloniality while also shifting away from the extractive nature of academic research. If we want to change the system it would do us well to let those that have always had different ways of knowing and being to take the lead in constructing the expression about their quotidian experience and its implications.
This is not to say that these practices are not fraught with contradiction and complexity. However, giving voice to those experiences creates the possibility to activelychange what we consider knowledge and who we understand to have access to it. Consequently, it is also necessary to piece apart the fraught nature of individualism, ethics and relationality within academic practice so that we may innovate towards a future that seeks liberation from capitalism/coloniality through a multiplicity of epistemologies and ontologies. Through this workshop we will practice collective work and thought through sharing our research experiences, challenges and steps towards developing futures that resist genocide and epistemicide.


HOW TO APPLY
Please fill out this online form:
https://share.mayfirst.org/apps/forms/s/9sxrFz2ZiLbLttWb43oy9tnb
In the form you will be asked to include a 1,000-word letter of motivation to explaining why you would like to participate in the workshop and what types of research or community projects that will benefit from your participation. It is recommended that you write the letter beforehand and then paste it into the form. If you have any questions please contact:
Dr. Erin Araujo, cambalach@autoproduzioni.net


IMPORTANT DATES
Sessions: November 16th to December 1st 2025
Application Deadline: until all seats are filled (limited capacity).
Course Payment: Due by November 13th, 2025


**SPACE IS LIMITED**


COSTS
Cost for participants from countries with a high access to money
(in US dollars)
$500 – $350 Solidarity price for well employed participants or collectives who want
to participate with a single contribution. This price is suggested for people who havesome kind of funding for their professional development or can afford it because of
their high salary level. This price contributes some support to other people, with less
economic possibilities of work, so that they can pay less.
$350 – $200 Students and participants who can afford it because they have access
to some type of financing or are collectives that want to participate through a single
contribution.
$200 – $80 Students, grassroots activists and participants who have little access to
money.
Cost for participants from countries with little access to money (in Mexican
pesos):
$5,000-$3,500 Solidarity price for well-employed participants or collectives who
want to participate with a single contribution. This price is suggested for people
who have some kind of funding for their professional development or can afford
it because of their high salary level. By paying this price, you will contribute in
supporting other people who lack economic resources or whose access is very
limited, and who want to participate in the workshop, so that they can pay less.
$3,500-$2,000 Students and participants who can afford it because they have
access to some type of financing or are collectives who want to participate
through a single contribution.
$2,000 – $800 Students, grassroots activists and participants who have little
access to money.
If for any reason you are unable to cover the fees, please ask for moneyless
exchange options to cover prices.
All proceeds from this workshop will go to support El Cambalache’s research,
community and decolonial work.






This workshop is provided by El Cambalache from its Department of Decolonial Economics.
El Cambalache is a project that works on decolonizing the economy. Located in San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas
and made by and for women and all those we know. It focuses on the exchange of things, knowledge and mutual aid
through workshops, actions, publications and an emerging podcast. Cambalache was started in 2014 and has been
created on a foundation of anti-systemic, anti-colonial and anti-capitalist values from local social movements towards
a future of well-being for all.
For more information see:
FB LaCambalache – IG Elcambalachesancristobal – X LaCambalachera – TT cambalacheras –
YT https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCslgLGj8V0LFxSaDnL8iYQg
Our documentary: Inter-Change Value (2016) https://vimeo.com/159060233
Please contact Dr. Erin Araujo at cambalach@autoproduzioni.net with questions.


Workshop on De- / Anti-Colonial Methods for Creating Collectivity, Incorporating Multiple Forms of Valuing and Supporting the Persistence of Our Relationships


Erin Araujo PhD

she/her/ella
Generator
Department of Decolonial Economics
El Cambalache,
Calle de los Arcos 5c
Barrio Cuxtitali
San Cristobal de las Casas
Chiapas, Mexico 29230


Academia.edu: independent.academia.edu/erinaraujo
El Cambalache FB: www.facebook.com/lacambalache
El Cambalache Blog:  https://cambalache.noblogs.org
El Cambalache Canal de Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCslgLGj8V0LFxSaDnL8iYQg 
Twitter: LaCambalachera  
Instagram: Elcambalachesancristobal
Tiktok: @cambalacheras