Su-ming Khoo

University of Galway | NUI Galway · School of Political Science and Sociology

This article unpacks some complexities of ‘decolonizing’ in Ireland, a complicated semiperipheral ‘mixed colony’, in which rhetorics, logic, and grammar are simultaneously colonial and decolonial, interrupting and complicitly reproducing divisive and dehumanizing colonialities of knowledge and being. The global call to decolonize academia invites I...

This chapter addresses creativity, research, learning and art rather broadly, to explore how creativity in research comes up against ethical considerations. Methods concern how research is done, while ethics are concerned with consequences and relationships between researchers and the worlds they move within and between. Methods concern the selecti...

After decades of turbulence and acute crises in recent years, how can we build a better future for Higher Education? Thoughtfully edited by Laura Czerniewicz and Catherine Cronin, this rich and diverse collection by academics and professionals from across 17 countries and many disciplines offers a variety of answers to this question. It addresses t...

The pandemic affected more than 1.5 billion students and youth, and the most vulnerable learners were hit hardest, making digital inequality in educational settings impossible to overlook. Given this reality, we, all educators, came together to find ways to understand and address some of these inequalities. As a product of this collaboration, we pr...

This paper responds to the UNDP 2022 Special Report on Human Security in the Anthropocene (hereafter ‘UNDP Special Report’, UNDP 2022), and HDCA Human Security Thematic Group’s sessions at the 2022 HDCA Antwerp conference, focused on interrogating the ‘soul’ of the human security concept. In order to facilitate the practical implementation of human...

The pandemic affected more than 1.5 billion students and youth, and the most vulnerable learners were hit hardest, making digital inequality in educational settings impossible to overlook. Given this reality, we, all educators, came together to find ways to understand and address some of these inequalities. As a product of this collaboration, we pr...

This book provides both an overview of, and an insight into, the rapidly expanding field of creative research methods. The contributors, from four continents, range from doctoral students through to independent and practice-based researchers to senior professors, providing a clear view of the applicability of creative research methods in all types...

Introduction: Planetary health (PH) has emerged as a leading field for raising awareness, debating, and finding solutions for the health impacts of human-caused disruptions to Earth's natural systems. PH education addresses essential questions of how humanity inhabits Earth, and how humans affect, and are affected by, natural systems. A pilot massi...

In this conclusion, we summarise some lessons from the examples and experiences in the preceding chapters, and in the e-books we edited on ‘Researching in the Age of COVID-19’ (Kara and Khoo, 2020a,b,c). We remember that crisis has two meanings: a sudden occurrence, such as a ship running aground, or a turning point, marking either recovery or dete...

The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic presented opportunities to engage in collective reflection about doing research in a continuing and unfolding global public health crisis. Focusing on qualitative and digital methods and taking “crisis” as a turning point for reflection, reflexivity and positionality in research methods and ethics, this volume particularl...

This review essay discusses decolonial and revisionist approaches to the sociological canon, centring on a major new work, Colonialism and Modern Social Theory by Gurminder Bhambra and John Holmwood (2021). The challenge to ‘classical’ social theory and the demand to reconstitute the theory curriculum come in the context of increased visibility for...

This article examines intersecting agendas and concerns in global citizenship education (GCE) and education for sustainable development (ESD) in the face of current global crises and pressures. While it cannot be assumed that the two educational projects automatically converge, generative and promising overlaps emerge from the shared interest in th...

As researchers have begun to adapt to the continuing presence of COVID-19, they have also begun to reflect more deeply on fundamental research issues and assumptions. Researchers around the world have responded in diverse, thoughtful and creative ways - from adapting data collection methods to fostering researcher and community resilience, while al...

As researchers continue to adapt, conduct and design their research in the presence of COVID-19, new opportunities to connect research creativity and ethics have opened up. Researchers around the world have responded in diverse, thoughtful and creative ways -adapting data collection methods, fostering researcher and community resilience, and explor...

Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Bringing together a range of experts across various sectors, this important volume explores some of the key issues that have arisen in the Global South with the COVID-19 pandemic. Situating the worldwide health crisis within broader processes of globalisation, the book investigates implications for d...

Higher education has been strongly contested in recent times, on the grounds of its role in reproducing epistemic injustice, leading to calls to ‘decolonise’ institutions, curricula and teaching practices. Meanwhile, the practice of epistemic critique also points to potentials for challenge, learning and change. This article offers critical reflect...

Higher education institutions (HEIs) across the globe have turned to online technologies in a bid to address the unprecedented disruption to their educational function, created by physical restrictions implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic. Educators, learning professionals, administrators, managers - all have had to muster the courage and deter...

10. Belluigi, D, Czerniewicz, l., Khoo, S, Algers, A., Buckley, L.A., Prinsloo, P., Mgqwashu, E.M, Camps, C., Brink, C., Marx, R., Wissing, G., Pallitt, N. (2020). Needs Must”? Critical reflections on the implications of the Covid19 ‘pivot online’ for equity in higher education. Digital Culture and Education (ISSN: 1836-8301).

Acknowledging that the climate emergency is a transdisciplinary challenge that changes everything, this paper offers reflections on teaching and research, attending to the public and students' demands, witnessed at a global climate protest—‘to not remain as bystanders, but join in action!‘ It asks, what could we begin to do to teach, research and w...

This article reflects on Collins’s classic work, The Credential Society (1979), situating his critique of educational credentialism within broader ‘conflict sociology’. The discussion reappraises Collins’s work in the context of the ‘new credentialism’, ‘new learning’ and the race, gender and class concerns raised in current debates on higher educa...

Systems‐based approaches to societal problem‐solving entail a capacity to synthesise our knowledge and skills such that we can resolve shared problems. However, the increasing range of knowledge specialisms, scientific and engineering methods, and skill profiles at the population‐level challenges solidarity. It is also difficult to identify unifyin...

This article begins with the proposition that inter- and transdisciplinarity offer an important methodological grounding for collaborative HE research addressing complex agendas such as HE internationalization. Internationalization acts as a figure for the ‘troubled’ nature of higher education; hence we begin with the larger problem, discussing the...

This article revisits the idea of ‘generations’ of human rights at the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration (UDHR) and 25th anniversary of the Vienna Declaration, in a new ‘post-human’ context. The basic assumptions underpinning human rights are compromised when the subject of rights is re-shaped by the ‘stark utopia’ of market globalisati...

We are living in an algorithmic age where mathematics and computer science are coming together in powerful new ways to influence, shape and guide our behaviour and the governance of our societies. As these algorithmic governance structures proliferate, it is vital that we ensure their effectiveness and legitimacy. That is, we need to ensure that th...

This article examines what it means to teach and research human rights and development now, within the context of public higher education (HE), as significant internal and external challenges face 'human rights' and 'development' as subjects in themselves. 'Development' has arguably been in crisis for decades, or has at least failed to escape from...

This article explores inter- and transdisciplinarity, given the need for more complex, relevant, and transformative knowledge to shift society towards more sustainable futures. It connects practical questions about economic, societal, and ecological limits to questions about the limitations of academic knowledge. Transdisciplinarity involves co-con...

This chapter critically interrogates the understanding of economics guiding higher education globally.

This chapter presents a picture of the implications of neo-liberal re-structuring, framed as ?academic capitalism?, to the erosion of the public role of the university and to understandings and practices of higher education. Drawing from experiences in Canada and Ireland, we offer insights from an international collaborative project on ethics and i...

Brazil’s Unified Health System (Sistema Único de Saúde, SUS) is rooted in the 1988 Citizen’s Constitution. Universal health reforms, inspired by Freire’s legacy of popular education, embody the struggle within Brazilian society against authoritarianism and inequality, and for democratization. “Controle social” (the participation of the public in ma...

This article discusses initiatives in Mexico to create alternative educational spaces. Following the 1994 Zapatista rebellion, subaltern social actors rejected mainstream education, seeing it as a failed means for imposing homogenisation, statism, and neo-liberalism. We discuss two examples of alternative tertiary educational spaces in Mexico’s poo...

This contribution identifies development as an emergent and contested key concept in the social and environmental sciences. ‘Development studies’ describes a field that includes multi-, inter-, and transdisciplinary approaches to economic growth, basic needs, inequality, human development, rights, resources, livelihoods, and sustainability, focusin...

This contribution examines key intersections between development, higher education and research. It suggests that the interactions between these domains are neglected and argues that higher education’s contribution needs to be re-imagined to address problematic divides between research and education, between education and other disciplines and betw...

This article examines the central but neglected principle of solidarity in human rights, health and bioethics, a concept subject to contention, evasion and confusion. It addresses the general ambivalence toward solidarity within law, philosophy and politics by discussing solidarity’s co-evolution with inegalitarian encapsulations and divisions of h...

This paper looks at the proposals for Universal Health Coverage as the key policy agenda for global health reform in the post-2015 period. It recalls the antecedent proposals for health equity and rights in the form of Primary Health care. It suggests that attention should be paid to the neglected dimension of solidarity, as well as equity as healt...

This contribution identifies development as an emergent and contested key concept in the social and environmental sciences. ‘Development studies’ describes a field that includes multi-, inter- and trans-disciplinary approaches to economic growth, basic needs, inequality, human development, rights, resources, livelihoods and sustainability, focusing...

‘Patients’ are increasingly seen through the lens of the ‘health consumer’. Non-communicable diseases and injuries are increasingly predominant, while a rejuvenated interest in the ‘social determinants of health’ and health inequalities re-locates individual biology and agency within a larger context of physical exposure and social conditions, high...

This chapter examines the case tor development education research, explores the relationship between research and development, education in the higher education sector and considers the implications for development education capacity and practice- it suggests a number of ways in which research enhances development education capacity, but argues tha...

This article discusses the question of ‘good governance’ in relation to the current debates about global development and health. It aims to clarify some of the conceptual confusion and problems surrounding the ‘governance’ idea, addressing governance issues in a direct and substantive way through a discussion of current global health reforms. The a...

This paper discusses the question of ‘good governance’ in relation to the current debates about global development and health. It explores the challenge of health governance in the face of interconnected complex developmental transitions. Global health is said to be undergoing its third ‘great transition’, the first two transitions being the clean...

This chapter critically examines the civic engagement agenda in higher education, asking who or what is to be ‘engaged’ and how this relates to understandings of the ‘civic’ and citizenship. ‘Engagement’ is an increasingly important priority within higher education, but the term is used to refer to a confusing array of notions and agendas. This cha...

Whether we are trying to find out if a particular development situation is sustainable, assess a development trend for sustainability, or compare development performance of different countries or regions, we have inevitably to ask the question: sustainable development of what? This chapter explores efforts to define, measure and compare aspects of...

Southern Theory is undoubtedly a major work from a writer who has made distinctive contributions to the debates on gender, power and culture. This book extends Connell’s concerns with problems of gender power and domination to more general problems of global power and knowledge and pertaining to the social sciences and sociology in particular. It w...

This essay discusses two important recent books on health justice and makes the case for their relevance to global health and to social and political mobilization for health reform. Health and Social Justice (Ruger, 2010) and Health Justice (Venkatapuram, 2011) approach theories of capabilities and justice as the substantive ground of human health....

This essay discusses two important recent books on health justice and makes the case for their relevance to global health and to social and political mobilization for health reform. Health and Social Justice (Ruger, 2010) and Health Justice (Venkatapuram, 2011) approach theories of capabilities and justice as the substantive ground of human health....

This briefing outlines the important historical role of alternative consumer activism in local and global health governance. This alternative approach distinctively integrates health with development, social justice and environmental issues. Alternative consumer activism fits with rights-based approaches, emphasising entitlements, accountability an...

This chapter explores some of the dilemmas and ambiguities of educating for global citizenship in a globalizing postcolonial university. It critically reflects upon two key moments in the experience of an Irish university through a postcolonial lens. The implications for global citizenship are discussed in terms of the ‘colonial present’, a concept...

This paper explores a capabilities approach to education and its potential contribution to shifting the ground beyond the ‘Universalism versus Cultural Relativism’ debate which has dominated the conversation about culture and human rights for at least two decades. It does so by drawing upon the capabilities approach, which originates within develop...

This article explores policies and practices of global citizenship and internationalisation within higher education in Canada and Ireland, comparing two Canadian and two Irish universities. The cases suggest a number of entangled and contradictory strands of internationalisation, with implications for global citizenship. Underlying notions of globa...

Vol 13, Autumn 2011 pp 1-10

Alternative Southern consumer activism, undertaken for example by the Consumers' Association of Penang (CAP) in Malaysia, presents significant sites of nodal governance through which local and global health rights are claimed. This alternative consumer approach distinctively integrates health with development, social justice and environmental issue...

Global flows of hazardous waste and waste management technologies are major sources of environmental contestation. They reflect political structures and struggles within, and between, developed and less developed countries. The ‘new mobilities paradigm’ is tested using two cases of protest in Malaysia and East Germany. Focusing on the conjunctures...

This article critically discusses the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), setting them within the wider context of universal human rights. It explores some key tensions embedded in the rights and development projects and draws parallels with the contradictions within the goals and targets of the MDGs. Although the MDGs are found to be problematic,...

There seems to be little consensus to date on how globalization has affected nationalism. Nations, states and ideologies of nation and nation-state all seem to have been affected differently, and the outcome of the discussion is, so far, inconclusive. Globalization has not led to the dissolving of nationalism, and the dissolution of old national st...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Queen's University of Belfast, 1999.