, THE ACTIVIST RESEARCHER OF EDUCATION: CHALLENGING EPISTEMICIDE, ONTOCIDE,
LINGUISTICIDE, CULTURCIDE AND SCHOLASTICIDE IN A TIME OF CRISIS
Introduction: Locating the Activist Researcher in a Time of Multiple Cides
To speak of becoming a researcher in education is already to acknowledge that research is never a
neutral act of extraction but a positioned, relational, and deeply political practice. This
understanding becomes urgent when we consider the contemporary moment as one not merely of
crisis but of what Santos (2014) terms "epistemicide"—the systematic destruction of non-Western,
Indigenous, and subaltern knowledges. Alongside this, scholars have identified ontocide (the
erasure of distinct ways of being), linguisticide (the annihilation of languages), culturcide (the
dissolution of living cultural practices), and scholasticide (the deliberate destruction of educational
systems and institutions). These multiple cides are not separate catastrophes but interlocking
dimensions of a single logic: the colonial, capitalist, and neoliberal project that decides which lives,
knowledges, and futures are worthy of preservation. In such a context, the conventional image of
the researcher as a detached observer, collecting data from a safe distance, becomes not only
inadequate but complicit. This essay argues that what is required instead is an activist researcher of
education—one who understands inquiry as intervention, who refuses the false separation
between knowing and doing, and who positions their work alongside those communities bearing
the weight of these destructions. The first part of this essay explores what constitutes such a
researcher, focusing on disposition rather than fixed identity. The second part considers the
specific role this researcher can play in a time of overlapping genocides, proposing that their task is
not merely to document wounds but to participate in the work of re-existence.
Becoming, Not Being: The Disposition of the Activist Researcher of Education
The activist researcher of education is best understood not as a stable identity one claims and then
holds, but as a continuous process of becoming—a disposition cultivated through reflexive practice,
ethical commitment, and political solidarity. Tuhiwai Smith (2012) reminds us that research has
historically been "one of the dirtiest words" in Indigenous vocabularies, precisely because
conventional research methodologies have so often served as instruments of colonial extraction.
To become an activist researcher, therefore, requires first an unlearning: a deliberate refusal of the
positivist fantasy that one can study suffering from a position of innocence. Instead, this researcher
embraces what Freire (1970) called "conscientization"—a critical awareness of how power
operates through research questions, methods, outputs, and institutional affiliations. This
awareness is not intellectual alone; it is embodied and affective, demanding that the researcher
continually ask: Whose interests does my work serve? Who is silenced by my research design?
What am I willing to risk?
A second dimension of this disposition is relational accountability. Wilson (2008), writing from an
Indigenous research paradigm, argues that accountability in research is not primarily to methods or
funding bodies but to relationships—to the human and more-than-human communities with which
one works. For the activist researcher of education, this means that research cannot be parachuted
in and then abandoned. It requires long-term commitment, reciprocity, and a willingness to have
one's research questions reshaped by the priorities of communities, not solely by academic
agendas. This relationality directly challenges the temporal logic of the neoliberal university, which
LINGUISTICIDE, CULTURCIDE AND SCHOLASTICIDE IN A TIME OF CRISIS
Introduction: Locating the Activist Researcher in a Time of Multiple Cides
To speak of becoming a researcher in education is already to acknowledge that research is never a
neutral act of extraction but a positioned, relational, and deeply political practice. This
understanding becomes urgent when we consider the contemporary moment as one not merely of
crisis but of what Santos (2014) terms "epistemicide"—the systematic destruction of non-Western,
Indigenous, and subaltern knowledges. Alongside this, scholars have identified ontocide (the
erasure of distinct ways of being), linguisticide (the annihilation of languages), culturcide (the
dissolution of living cultural practices), and scholasticide (the deliberate destruction of educational
systems and institutions). These multiple cides are not separate catastrophes but interlocking
dimensions of a single logic: the colonial, capitalist, and neoliberal project that decides which lives,
knowledges, and futures are worthy of preservation. In such a context, the conventional image of
the researcher as a detached observer, collecting data from a safe distance, becomes not only
inadequate but complicit. This essay argues that what is required instead is an activist researcher of
education—one who understands inquiry as intervention, who refuses the false separation
between knowing and doing, and who positions their work alongside those communities bearing
the weight of these destructions. The first part of this essay explores what constitutes such a
researcher, focusing on disposition rather than fixed identity. The second part considers the
specific role this researcher can play in a time of overlapping genocides, proposing that their task is
not merely to document wounds but to participate in the work of re-existence.
Becoming, Not Being: The Disposition of the Activist Researcher of Education
The activist researcher of education is best understood not as a stable identity one claims and then
holds, but as a continuous process of becoming—a disposition cultivated through reflexive practice,
ethical commitment, and political solidarity. Tuhiwai Smith (2012) reminds us that research has
historically been "one of the dirtiest words" in Indigenous vocabularies, precisely because
conventional research methodologies have so often served as instruments of colonial extraction.
To become an activist researcher, therefore, requires first an unlearning: a deliberate refusal of the
positivist fantasy that one can study suffering from a position of innocence. Instead, this researcher
embraces what Freire (1970) called "conscientization"—a critical awareness of how power
operates through research questions, methods, outputs, and institutional affiliations. This
awareness is not intellectual alone; it is embodied and affective, demanding that the researcher
continually ask: Whose interests does my work serve? Who is silenced by my research design?
What am I willing to risk?
A second dimension of this disposition is relational accountability. Wilson (2008), writing from an
Indigenous research paradigm, argues that accountability in research is not primarily to methods or
funding bodies but to relationships—to the human and more-than-human communities with which
one works. For the activist researcher of education, this means that research cannot be parachuted
in and then abandoned. It requires long-term commitment, reciprocity, and a willingness to have
one's research questions reshaped by the priorities of communities, not solely by academic
agendas. This relationality directly challenges the temporal logic of the neoliberal university, which
