Edgewalkers and the westernized university

Edgewalkers is a collection of diverse experiences in and apart from the westernized university. Through observations and positionalities narrated from various vantage points, authors recount the ways that the westernized university serves the knowledge enterprise of coloniality while considering its transformative possibilities. Presented in four sections— Section I: Land, places, and economy, Section II: Authority, power, and institutions, Section III: Normativity, being, and society, and Section IV: Knowledge, subjectivity, and praxis—the volume moves beyond traditional critiques of the westernized university structure and conventional connections between scholarship and social responsibility. Through scholarship that engages multiple lenses of ethics, politics, and poetics, authors explore the multiple ways that knowledge and spaces of knowing are produced as they share pellucid meanings of social and epistemic justice, decoloniality and embodiment, and vivid re-imaginings of what the university can be.

Biographical sketches of editors:

Elizabeth A. Sumida Huaman is Professor in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. A Wanka and Quechua (Indigenous Andean) educational researcher, her work focuses on the links between environment, land-based cultural practices, and educational development in the Americas. Her work includes collaborative studies with Indigenous communities and organizations on Indigenous knowledge systems and land stewardship through educational research and design.

Nathan D. Martin is Associate Professor in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. As a sociologist, his research contributes to academic debates, produces policy‐relevant knowledge, and advances principles of equity, access, and social justice. Two research areas lie at the heart of his work: inequalities in postsecondary education, and social class formation and identity in the current globalization era.

na’im madyun is an Instructional Coach focused on family engagement at Intermediate School District 287. ISD 287 is a trauma-sensitive, equity-centered school district that educates students who are unable to receive the well-being support needed in their "home" school district.  Dr. madyun was formerly a higher education administrator and associate professor of higher education where he focused on access to higher education and social factors explaining education disparities for minoritized youth.

Peter Mataira is Associate Professor in the School of Social Work in the College of Health and Society at Hawai‘i Pacific University. Dr. Mataira is a Māori scholar with extensive clinical health and community work experience as a substance abuse educator and counselor, health advocate, policy analyst, grant writer, and business consultant. He has published on themes including social entrepreneurship, Indigenous research methods, masculinity, resiliency, and adaptive leadership.