Who is Postcolonial Networks and what is our mission?

Postcolonial Networks seeks through Borderless Press to celebrate, cultivate and distribute the academic work of Majority World scholars who are particularly writing in the contexts of Africa, Asia, and South America.

Our Origins

Long before Postcolonial Networks became a nonprofit organization, our knowledge activism movement had begun without a name and without a clear vision. The early beginning of Postcolonial Networks was as the Postcolonial Theology Network, a small Facebook group that kept thirty scholars in conversation after a postcolonial scholarly meeting at the University of Manchester in England, when Dr. Duggan, the founder, was doing his PhD there.

That post-meeting Facebook group grew from 1,000 members in the first year to 2,000 members in two years, 5,000 members in five years, 7,000 in six years, and 10,000+ members in eight years. Now Postcolonial Networks also has a page of over 1,000 likes. At each of these stages, Postcolonial Networks went through major changes as a community and established itself as a knowledge activism leader.

At every stage of our growth, Postcolonial Networks has been recognized as a community that encourages civil discourse across radical differences. Over the last years we have enhanced this reputation with a commitment to engage and ally with authors in contexts around the world that have been systematically ignored by most academic publishers. At every stage, we were becoming the organization we are today, one leading a knowledge activism movement.

Postcolonial Networks began twelve years ago talking about postcolonial theologies and theories. Today Postcolonial Networks’ knowledge activism is less about talk and more about working with Majority World scholars. Our work has gathered all of its social and intellectual capital to reorient the fragmented, colonial knowledge system, a system that still has a strong bias for North American and European scholars and an under-representation of Majority World scholars in published books with major academic presses, posts in major journals and visible leadership in the academy.