1) How did you determine the focus of your research, and how does it relate to the challenges that you consider to be the most important for advancing academic freedom as a fundamental human right?

This research uses Afro-diasporic perspectives, critical sociology, and intersectionality as theoretical and methodological tools to highlight the role of associations of Afro-descendant researchers in com-bating racism, sexism, and class inequalities in academia. These tools also help identify the barriers associated with ethnic, racial, and gender inequalities that women of African descent face in academia.
This perspective aligns with the priority challenges of advancing academic freedom as a fundamental human right because it recognizes that deep structural inequalities affect Afro-descendant people in the region. Additionally, sexist, racist, and classist biases persist in scientific and university spheres, limiting the full exercise of this right.

Science is a political practice, as sociologist Karin Knorr Cetina has pointed out, and its struggle extends across a multitude of arenas. Thus, freedom of expression, research, teaching, and learning requires constant analysis of how knowledge is socially produced and disseminated, as well as the promotion of principles that protect against entrenched censorship, repression, and new restrictions that violate academic freedom, even violently, in the 21st century.

2) What impact do you think your research will have on academic freedom in the short and long term?

In the short term, our aim is to raise awareness of the silent practices of exclusion that limit historically discriminated groups’ exercise of academic freedom, as well as highlight the agency of associations fighting to make their voices heard in academia, disputing the meanings and interpretations of social reality. Along these lines, we also seek to enrich the notion of academic freedom as a fundamental human right.

In the long term, we hope to provide new theoretical and methodological tools to strengthen studies on academic freedom in Latin America. We also aim to highlight that Afro-Latin American social movement organizations produce knowledge and practices that challenge the various exclusionary logics that permeate academic institutions. We are interested in increasing the visibility of knowledge produced by Afro-diasporic communities in the region so their epistemologies can be recognized, studied, and incorporated into academic spaces. Ultimately, we aim to promote the transformation of the academic field in the region from an intersectional, anti-racist perspective.

3) What is the importance of taking part in this call for research proposals that is being promoted by CAFA and CLACSO?

The CAFA and CLACSO Call for Papers is a strategic opportunity to establish a shared agenda that promotes an anti-racist, intersectional approach to debates on academic freedom in the region. We believe academic freedom cannot be considered in isolation from the material, social, cultural, and institutional conditions that limit the participation of Afro-diasporic researchers in knowledge produc-tion. Furthermore, academic freedom presents significant challenges to major academic research cen-ters and universities, particularly with respect to incorporating Afro-diasporic thought. Knowledge production is a racialized epistemic system in which racial, gender, and class hierarchies persist, along with privileges that disproportionately affect indigenous peoples and Afro-descendants.

In the context of the significant growth of higher education in Latin America, CAFA and CLACSO’s call for proposals invites us to critically reconsider the roles of researchers, teachers, and students in this process. This reconsideration should be associated with protecting fundamental rights, such as academic freedom, to promote epistemic justice.