Abdoulaye Gueye
Research project
Is Knowledge production in Africa informed by the colonial intellectual legacy? Empirical evidence from African bibliometrics.
Project summary
A robust debate is taking place within academic circles about knowledge production in Africa. Scholars from Africa and the West are questioning the degree of autonomy of current African knowledge production vis-à-vis the colonial intellectual legacy. As multiple voices fill the new research field, those embracing a decolonial approach have been noticeable.
This project engages with the body of studies that align with this approach. While emphasizing their invaluable insights, it points to their methodological and theoretical shortcomings. The dearth of empirical substance, the systematic attribution of asymmetrical academic relations to the colonial past, and the uniformization of both Western and African countries’ sociopolitical histories are some examples.
By analysing hundreds of thousands of publications by African academics based in four categories of African universities, this project assesses empirically the extent to, and forms in which the colonial past purportedly shape knowledge production in Africa.
Theoretically nuanced, it introduces concepts of internationalization-driven and colonialism-driven asymmetry to differentiate between academic inequality resulting from past colonial ties and that deriving from the agenda of globalization of research.
Biography
Abdoulaye Gueye is a professor of sociology at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He has held many residency fellowships across the globe, among which the Harvard University Hutchins Center’s, the Princeton-based Institute for Advanced Study’s, the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study’s, the Carnegie African Diaspora Programme’s (won twice).
Laye has also held visiting professorships at several universities, most notably at the University of Ghana, École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris, Université Paris Cité, and École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Marseille.
Laye is the author of three sociological monographs and a novel; he has edited four books, and penned dozens of academic articles. His publications appeared in various international journals, including The DuBois Review, Esprit, The British Journal of Canadian Studies. He also contributed several dozens of chapters to edited volume.
Laye has served as the Francophone editor of the Canadian Journal of African Studies, and more recently on the Board of Directors of the African Studies Association.
