Transcultural and First Nations doctoral education and epistemological border-crossing: histories and epistemic justice

Abstract

Existing literature on transcultural doctoral education remains largely silent about how history enters knowledge creation and the supervisory relationship. This paper draws upon Andzaldúa’s borderlands theory and de Sousa Santo’s theory on epistemologies of the South to examine the complex ways that history impacts upon First Nations, migrant, refugee and culturally diverse doctoral candidates’ epistemological border-crossing. We explore how our life history study of 40 research candidates and supervisors across seven Australian universities casts new light on knowledge creation in transnational and First Nations doctoral education. Findings show research supervision as a multimodal process of epistemological border-crossing that is deeply embedded in intersected histories. We argue that a history-informed supervision approach demonstrates the deconstructive possibilities of epistemological border-crossing and contributes towards global epistemic justice.