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While the possibility of a university fostering sustainable development is present in the extant literature and policy documents, the idea still warrants further consideration. Therefore, this paper aims to identify the nature and outcomes of the university’s engagement with Indigenous communities and perceptions of Indigenous knowledge systems in both academic and non-academic activities, and what might be required to foster the university’s contributions towards sustainable development.

A qualitative case study of the only public university in The Gambia was conducted, including non-university actors. Interviews and focus group discussion methods were used, and these enabled close collaboration between researchers and participants, and the latter were empowered to describe their perceptions of reality.

Three major sets of findings emerged from the analysis of the transcripts from interviews and focus group discussions with the university and community members. These are the limited nature of and outcomes from university–community engagement, the sustainable outcomes of Indigenous practices and ideas for Indigenising university engagement for sustainable development.

Particular implications of the study that underpins this paper can be underscored; these include: a contribution to the literature on ways of connecting Indigenous communities with universities, and to a conceptualisation of the Indigenised university; a provision of insights into the connectivity between university community engagement, Indigenous knowledge systems and sustainable development; the creation of a context for subsequent studies on practical steps that universities might take in the direction of epistemic justice and sustainable development for all; and heightening the intractability of theoretical and philosophical issues of epistemology, knowledge ecology and epistemological justice, as they reveal themselves in practice, in complex situations.

Matters of the university reaching out to Indigenous peoples have yet to find their way into conceptualisations of the university for sustainable development. This paper addresses this gap in the existing literature by advancing possibilities for the Indigenised university for sustainable development to emerge.

This paper aims to ask how the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) has orchestrated a sustainable development (SD) agenda in its international policy since 2020.

By drawing on theoretical ideas around policy orchestration as a key UN governing strategy and applying them to the analysis of the progression of the SD agenda in the EHEA, the paper conducts a thematic analysis of six recent key EHEA international policy documents and 19 interviews with key Bologna stakeholders in France, Germany and Italy.

The resultant analysis uncovers three overarching key themes that show the EHEA has the capacity to mitigate pitfalls in the UN’s SD agenda; some weaknesses of the UN’s orchestration of SD are translated into weaknesses in the EHEA’s formulation of its SD agenda; and the further development of an SD agenda as an essential direction of EHEA’s work. The paper then goes on to discuss how EHEA policies only mention SD discourse, omit concrete plans for its implementation and keep the very meaning of SD ambiguous throughout international policy documents.

The authors offer three original recommendations that the EHEA should adopt in an attempt to mitigate the issues raised in the run-up to its 2030 deadline for implementing its policies: the EHEA should develop an explicit definition of SD; recognise the Euro-centredness of EHEA policies and open them up to other voices; and cite academic research when developing policy documents.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the indigenous Chinese concept of suzhi (素质) with the aim of furthering the development of Chinese human resource management (HRM) research and practice.

An extensive review of the literature on suzhi, published in the West, as well as in China, is the basis for proffering an organizational-level conceptualization of suzhi in the Chinese context.

Instead of understanding it as a free-floating signifier, we argue that suzhi can be considered as a criterion-based framework for HRM research and practice. Suzhi research is classified into two major sources – indigenous Chinese and indigenized Western constructs. We further make a distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic suzhi, and analyze a popular set of suzhi criteria, considering de (morality) and cai (talent), while focusing on de in HRM selection (德才兼备, 以德为先). As multilevel and multidimensional framework, suzhi criteria may form different gestalts in different organizations and industries.

From a social cultural and historical perspective, HRM research that incorporates a combination of indigenous and indigenized suzhi characteristics may receive better acceptance by individuals, organizations and the society in the Chinese context. Accordingly, the reconstruction of suzhi into manageable and measurable dimensions can be undertaken for more effective HRM practice in the Chinese context.

The HRM literature is advanced by linking the indigenous suzhi discourse to Chinese indigenous HRM research and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to articulate a meaningful response to recent calls to “indigenize” and “decolonize” the Anthropocene in the social sciences and humanities; and in doing so to challenge and extend dominant conceptualisations of the Anthropocene offered to date within a posthuman and more-than-human intellectual context.

The paper develops a radical material and relational ontology, purposefully drawing on an indigenous knowledge framework, as it is specifically exemplified in Maori approaches to anthropogenic impacts on species and multi-species entanglements. The paper takes as its focus particular species of whales, trees and humans and their entanglements. It also draws on, critically engages with, and partially integrates posthuman and more-than-human theory addressing the Anthropocene.

The findings of this study are that we will benefit from approaching the Anthropocene from situated and specific ontologies rooted in place, which can frame multi-species encounters in novel and productive ways.

The paper calls for a more expansive and critical version of social science in which the relations between human and more-than-human becomes much more of a central concern; but in doing so it must recognize the importance of multiple histories, knowledge systems and narratives, the marginalization of many of which can be seen as a symptom of ecological crisis. The paper also proposes adopting Zoe Todd’s suggested tools to further indigenize the Anthropocene – though there remains much more scope to do so both theoretically and methodologically.

The paper argues that Anthropocene narratives must incorporate deeper colonial histories and their legacies; that related research must pay greater attention to reciprocity and relatedness, as advocated by posthuman scholarship in developing methodologies and research agendas; and that non-human life should remain firmly in focus to avoid reproducing human exceptionalism.

In societies where populations are coming to terms in different ways with living through an era of environmental breakdown, it is vital to seek out forms of knowledge and progressive collaboration that resonate with place and with which progressive science and humanities research can learn and collaborate; to highlight narratives which “give life and dimension to the strategies – oppositional, affirmative, and yes, often desperate and fractured – that emerge from those who bear the brunt of the planet’s ecological crises” (Nixon, 2011, p. 23).

The paper is original in approaching the specific and situated application of indigenous ontologies in some of their grounded everyday social complexity, with the potential value of opening up the Anthropocene imaginary to a more radical and ethical relational ontology.

My research is a personal effort to understand the experiences that have shaped my work, practice, and living of teaching mathematics. From the boy storied as being smart in mathematics to the man who was tasked in finding ways to Indigenize school mathematics, I have composed stories to live by that share the tensions, conflicting stories, and mis-educative experiences that have shaped who I am as a White Euro-Western mathematician in a Canadian prairie province. My research wonder serves a practical justification as I “attend to the importance of considering the possibility of shifting, or changing practice” (Clandinin, 2013, p. 36) in the context of cross-cultural teaching and learning. Much of the research around Indigenous mathematics education is shaped by misconceptions of Indigenization and inconsistent practices of how this is taken up by practitioners – topics that I analyzed during my doctoral studies. Through my inquiry described in the chapter, I hoped to achieve a nuanced understanding of how the experiences of diverse lives shape the learning of school mathematics.

Negotiating the ‘middle-ground’ (Lear, 2006) between New Zealand universities and Maori whare wananga is the issue discussed in this chapter. It is suggested that the Maori institution of the marae, used as a ‘mediating structure’ (Berger, 1979) is ideally placed as the negotiating space to enhance the learning and scholarship of all students who seek a sense of belonging as well as the opportunity to increase their potential as global citizens. It is argued that choosing to make a contribution to the betterment of all New Zealanders is the prior intellectual and cultural engagement.

The cultures and languages of Africa and Asia have had an immense impact on the use of English language there. Awareness of this impact led to a recognition of new, indigenized varieties known collectively as world “Englishes”. They display a number of linguistic and pragmatic patterns different from native varieties, and these have been the subject of much scholarly activity over the last 30 years. This selected bibliography attempts to introduce the literature to librarians, other than English, linguistics, or education selectors. Interdisciplinary in nature, the study of world “Englishes” has implications for research in the history, culture, sociology, and politics of these regions. Selectors in these subjects and general reference librarians should therefore know more about world “Englishes” to provide more useful assistance to patrons.

This chapter provides some final thoughts on global meaning making as exemplified by the authors in the book who interrogated literacy research, policies, and pedagogical pursuits applying the tenets of global meaning making with the ultimate goal of transforming how we engage in global language and literacy endeavors. We consider their work associated with the three dimensions of interrupting existing practices and policies, decolonizing spaces for learning and indigenizing curriculum and pedagogy. In addition, we raise questions that require further investigation related to global meaning making that is emancipatory and promotes the cultural capital of the locals.

Despite the existing gaps in the use of technology in East Africa, the region is among the fastest-growing mobile data users on the continent. This progress is partially attributed to local initiatives to develop and adapt homegrown technologies to local contexts to increase their accessibility and use even in the remotest areas. In this chapter we identify a few of these innovations in Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda and examine how they have been indigenised to fit local contexts as well as the processes of their diffusion, adoption, affordability and accessibility among users and their everyday gratifications from the innovations. The socio-technological assemblage theory, which illuminates the influences of, and the connections between various types of actors and their roles, visions, ideas, concepts and the technological products, informs our inquiry. Other related concepts including ‘innovation’, ‘indigenisation’ and ‘diffusion’ are discussed to understand the homegrown technology innovations and their adaptability. Discussions with both innovators and users/beneficiaries reveal rigorous proactiveness and responsiveness of innovation creators and users in the three countries – reflected in numerous attestations of life transformation. Nevertheless, there is a paradigm shift in the diffusion of innovations amongst users – contrary to the discourse around its early precepts.