The notes, links, and resources for this episode with Zulfia Abawe can be found here https://decideforimpact.com/show482-belonging-identity-and-decolonizing-from-within-zulfia-abawe/

In this conversation with Zulfia Abawe, I learned:

• 00:00 Intro – how to pronounce Afghanistan and the decolonization of the IDGs
• 03:40 – Explaining the work that Zulfia does at the University of Wales
• 04:30 The research work of Zulfia on international relations, decoloniality, relationality, and foreign interventions in Afghanistan.
• 05:20 Looking at colonisation not only from a North-South or East-West perspective.
• 09:15 The symbolic elements of the various accents and how they form me.
• 11:00 Afghanistan is called the graveyard of empires.
• 13:20 Challenging the victim-savior approach from the Western world towards Afghanistan.
• 16:05 You have to get as much education as possible, and books are your best friends – her mother always reminded her.
• 19:18 Bring in your lived experiences, especially in the era of AI.
• 23:50 We hoped that access to more information would make people smarter, but it often works in the opposite direction, and critical thinking is lacking.
• 30:25 The definition of leadership by Northouse misses the non-human relationships.
• 34:55 Acquiring knowledge by taking time to think about the question.
• 38:45 Going in and experiencing the similarities by being a part of the culture.
• 41:05 Decolonisation is the process of reflecting and questioning the things that I need to change within myself.
• 42:35 Knowledge is produced by the mind, the soul, the heart and desire. (Plato)
• 45:20 Using intuition from your own experiences and the lived experiences of your forefathers in your decision-making.
• 46:00 Looking for explanations of intuitive capabilities in the work of Jung and Frankl.
• 56:40 The intention behind the question and stepping onto the cultural island.
• 59:45 Zulfia is looking for co-authors for the book she is writing on foreign interventions—both military and non-military—from a gendered perspective and micro-resistance.

Zulfia is a lecturer in Global Business and Cohort Lead in the MBA Global Program at the Faculty of Business and Creative Industries at the University of South Wales (Zulfia Abawe — University of South Wales). Holding three post-graduate degrees, including a Masters in Public Policy, LLM in Human Rights, and a PhD in Law and Democracy, she has extensive experience in political and legal analysis, with a particular focus on Afghanistan’s legal pluralism and political institutions. Her PhD dissertation examined Afghanistan’s legal pluralism from a gendered perspective and its reflection, or lack of, in the 2004 Afghan constitution.

Currently, she is exploring relationality and decoloniality as an analytical and theoretical framework to study foreign interventions in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021, emphasizing decoloniality, local practices and decolonial knowledge production in legal and political developments.

Let’s get started…