This paper reflects on how researcher positioning can support the development of a critical pedagogical practice in education research and practice that claims to use a decolonial lens. Using an international research project (the Horizon project EXPECT_Art, 2024-2026) as an illustrative case study, the paper explores how researchers’ reflections and statements regarding identity‑focused and/or theoretical positionality shape, enable, and potentially limit their ability to enact solidarity‑oriented methodological and ethical approaches. In doing so, it highlights the tensions between self-articulated positionality and the practical enactment of decolonial commitments in research and education practice. This paper builds in part on a forthcoming article that reflects on the research project’s decolonial stance (Jacobsen, 2026 forthcoming) and contributes to ongoing debates on performative decoloniality (Cheney, 2018; Two Convivial Thinkers, 2024; Vergès, 2018). In the present paper, these insights are extended through a discussion of research‑informed teaching at the university level, thereby situating the argument within broader debates on the decolonisation of the university (Dei, 2016). More specifically, the paper discusses the performativity of decolonial commitments. It raises questions such as: How can scholars who claim a decolonial framework avoid reproducing colonial and patriarchal relations within academic institutions, in both research and teaching? How do universities continue to invisibilise certain bodies and epistemologies, even within frameworks labelled as decolonial (Dei, 2016)? And how might decoloniality be applied reflexively: directed inward to interrogate one’s own entanglement in systems of power (Zembylas, 2019, 2025), rather than merely outwardly as a critique of society? As an empirical example, the paper draws on experiences from an EXPECT_Art workshop, where researchers tested a method usually used with children in school – decoding and interpreting artworks (Jacobsen & Nielsen, 2026 forthcoming) – to facilitate shared reflexivity on positionality. In this workshop, all participating researchers were white majority subjects, while the artists were racialised and the artworks explicitly addressed racialisation. The analysis highlights participants’ reflections on power relations, including how artists’ and researchers’ positionalities were negotiated in relation to one another and to broader societal contexts. The example points to the relationship between researchers’ identity-based declarations of positionality and their engagement with deeper, solidarity-oriented dimensions of positionality, illustrating how more reflexive approaches can support critical educational research.

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