Recent years have witnessed an upsurge in calls to decolonize the university. For a long time, criticism against the university’s epistemic hegemony (cf. Mignolo, 2011) had remained mostly confined to scholarly circles of, for instance, feminist, post/decolonial or social and cultural studies scholars (cf. de Sousa Santos et al., 2008; bell hooks in Media Education Foundation, 2002).  Under the influence of the increasing multipolarity and diversity of our contemporary societies and of international decolonization activism, such concerns have now become much more mainstream.

As a result, and in response to criticisms of the epistemological canon that the assumed universality of Western knowledge production has reinforced and the sustained inequalities this produces, universities, scholars and activists across the globe have formulated different proposals to decolonize the university. Depending on the context, these proposals range from: addressing the crisis of representation (Begum & Saini, 2019), diversifying the curriculum, widening participation, changing staff recruitment policies (Abu Moghli & Kadiwal, 2021; Pimblott, 2020), removing physical traces from the university campus (Newsinger, 2016), and so on.  

One particular option that has been proposed is to stimulate a pluri-versal understanding of the world (Mignolo, 2011) within the university (Gallien, C., & جاليان, ك, 2020). This  option of pluri-versity  (Martinez-Vargas, 2020) goes beyond stimulating a more diverse composition of staff, students and curriculum within the university.  Rather it proposes an altogether different, pluriversal understanding of the world; an understanding, sensing, and knowing of the world as a world in “which many worlds can co-exist” (Mignolo 2011).  Seeking to preserve the heterogeneity of the world and the plurality of worldviews, the option of the pluri-versity  seeks to spark “imaginaries beyond the naturalized grammar of modernity”(Andreotti et al, 2015, 22). As such this option goes “beyond reform” (Andreotti et al, 2015, 22) of the university as a modern institute of education and knowledge production.

Many reflections have already been formulated about why a pluri-versal understanding  is needed (Boidin et al, 2012) and what it could practically consist of in universities in countries that were formerly colonized (e.g. Stein et al, 2021; Le Grange, 2020).  Little has however been written on how spaces of pluri-versality could practically be generated in or at the border of a European university (Gallien, C., & جاليان, ك, 2020).  Moreover, several questions regarding the pluriversal spaces, such as ‘how can bridges be built between different worldviews?’ or ‘how do  power relations play out in the pluriverse?’( Gallien, C., & جاليان, ك, 2020 )  remain unanswered.

In 2022 we undertook ‘The Conversations’. This public experiment was a practical attempt to create the conditions to make possible a ‘pluri-versity’ (cf. Van Ruyskensvelde & Berghmans, 2022).  In this paper we wil present an analysis of this experiment. This analysis will also serve as a stepping stone towards a wider reflection on some of the hitherto undertheorized issues with regards to the creation of pluriversal spaces in Western higher education.

In 2022, we organized ‘The Conversations’. This project, which took place at the border of a Belgian university (KU Leuven), brought together seven people with different identities, experiences of and positionalities towards the question of colonialism and decolonization. This paper rests on a detailed description of the case-study of The Conversations. Complemented with a thorough literature study of the decolonization of universities, this presentation analyzes and theorizes this pedagogical practice as a possibility to create the conditions for a pluri-versity (Martinez-Vargas, 2020).

This paper identifies some of the key characteristics of The Conversations to open up wider reflections about the conditions necessary for spaces of pluriversity to emerge. More specifically, this paper emphasizes how this pedagogical practice was one of 'community', situated at the border of the university, that aimed at “changing the terms of the conversation” (Mignolo, 2011) and carefully bringing together different ways of knowing. Reflecting both on the characteristics as well as the challenges that emerged during the process, our analysis allows us to address some of the undertheorized issues and unanswered questions, mentioned in the previous section.

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