UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — What began as a kitchen table conversation during the COVID-19 pandemic has blossomed into an international platform bringing scholars, students, and others together to “decolonialize knowledge.”

The African Studies Global Virtual Forum, established by Sinfree Makoni, professor of African studies and applied linguistics and director of Penn State’s African Studies program, with colleagues from across the University and throughout the world, offers weekly presentations and conversations loosely based on a central theme of “entangling different ways of thinking and knowing.”

According to Makoni, the initial conversations in 2020 often centered around books of interest. “We were discussing a book I had written with Alastair Pennycook [distinguished professor of language, society, and education emeritus at the University of Technology Sydney in New South Wales, Australia]. I thought that instead of focusing on the book, perhaps we should focus on the authors and ask them to come and discuss their books with us.”

The virtual environment provided the perfect setting for expanding the “kitchen table” to include an international audience of scholars, authors, social scientists, applied linguists, and students. In essence, Makoni said, the pandemic enabled him and his colleagues to do something that hadn’t been done before — to bring broad attention to the scholarship of the global south. The African Studies Global Virtual Forum was born.

Oxford Languages defines the global south as “the nations of the world which are regarded as having a relatively low level of economic and industrial development and are typically located to the south of more industrialized nations.” The global south is a largely under-recognized and under-studied source of language and scholarship, Makoni explained. “By studying contributions from the global south, we find ways to rethink and reconsider the dominant overarching ideas from colonized nations — the global north,” he said.

“Disciplines have tended to have ideas only from the global north,” Makoni continued. “This project is asserting that things from the global south are also relevant — both to the global south and the global north. The Global Virtual Forum is enabling scholars in the global south to question the basis of their own scholarship, and it is giving the north a new lens through which it examines its scholarship. This is an effort to examine what the world looks like from different perspectives and how the global north and global south are entangled.”

The Global Virtual Forum has become a weekly event that occurs every Friday (and at times twice a week on Fridays and Saturdays) during the academic year and throughout the summer. Attendance can be as high 250 people, depending on the clout of the presenter. Topics range from discussions of feminism, racism and multilingualism to literature, global health, eastern European scholarship, waterscape epistemologies, and much more. The events have attracted participants from every continent except Antarctica, and invitations to speak have never been necessary. “I didn’t know there would be so many people interested in participating,” Makoni said. “We are booked through 2024, every single week.” 

Another important dimension of the Global Virtual Forum is the inaugural “Global Southern School,” a hybrid virtual and physical event to be held in South Africa in July. Organized by Penn State, the University of Connecticut and Nelson Mandela University, the event will bring scholars and students from different disciplines together for presentations and discussions.

Makoni said the scholarship of the Global Virtual Forum has led him to propose the first dual-title doctoral program in Applied Linguistics and African Studies. He is also contemplating developing a course in Applied Linguistics drawing exclusively on scholarship from and by African scholars. The course would be the first of its kind to showcase the impact of Africa on applied linguistics.

Though all Global Virtual Forum events are free and open to the public, important funding from the College of the Liberal Arts supports two graduate students who help manage the forum and allows every session to be transcribed and preserved.

“We are very grateful to [Senior Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies] Scott Bennett and [Susan Welch Dean of the College of the Liberal Arts] Clarence Lang,” Makoni said. “Usually, you have to prove something is viable before funding comes through, but Scott Bennett and Clarence Lang believe in what we are doing and saw fit to provide financial support. They started funding us a year after we started in our kitchen.”

“The Global Virtual Forum is a remarkably successful and meaningful program that brings together people from all over the world every single week,” Lang said. “It is so important to challenge ideas and perspectives that have long gone unquestioned about African and African-descended people. Dr. Makoni and his colleagues are discovering and expanding new cutting-edge knowledge in these areas, and the College of the Liberal Arts is the perfect place for this kind of interaction to take place.”

The forum has already generated a series of books that include perspectives from the presenters as well as comments from other scholars. For those who cannot afford to purchase the books, however, Makoni said the plan is to produce videos, provide transcripts, and eventually launch a film series.

“The books have become a type of collaborative scholarship, which challenges the idea of a singular author working on their own,” Makoni said, noting he imagines a time when collaborative scholarship is recognized by tenure committees to help those who are trying to build their careers. Makoni said he is also excited about the international networking opportunities the forum is providing for graduate students in the College of the Liberal Arts, the College of Education, and those participating from other universities throughout the world.

Makoni has been both thrilled and surprised by how the forum has grown from the initial “kitchen table” discussions to what it has become today. He said he is grateful to Associate Professor of English and African Studies Cheryl Sterling (the previous director of the African Studies program), the staff in African Studies, and many others who assist with the management of the Global Forum — the majority of whom are volunteers.  

“I could not have imagined the Global Virtual Forum would grow to this extent, and we are just beginning,” Makoni said. “The sheer excitement I see in my students is worth it, but the forum is providing so much more. We are reaching an international audience and bringing different views together.”