Multiple and Competing Knowledges in the Public Sphere

The question of the relationship between knowledge(s), beliefs and society is key to tackling many of today’s societal inequalities. Many contemporary societal challenges—from decolonization to identity politics, religious conflicts to conspiracy theories, to “post-truth” global media and the climate crisis—revolve around questions of what counts as legitimate knowledge. At the same time, ignoring marginalised knowledges can have deleterious effects in implementing public policy or in identifying democratic solutions to global challenges. 

While this issue is well established in academia, this OSC project seeks to identify ways to move these theoretical insights into operation, in collaboration with non-profit organisations who aim to influence public policy (charities, thinktanks, NGOs, etc.). We will co-develop a new framework to articulate how overlapping and often competing knowledges should be considered in specific contexts.. By bringing together an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars with key stakeholders from non-profit organisations, we will instrumentalise the insights of this emerging subject area to help implement better public policy and develop democratic solutions to global societal challenges.