PUBLICATIONS
Research and Articles
WËLAMÀLSËWAKÀN (GOOD HEALTH):
REIMAGINING THE RIGHT TO HEALTH THROUGH LENAPE EPISTEMOLOGIES
Health & Human Rights Journal, July 2023
Human rights have historically advanced an anthropocentric world view that reinforces the right to health of human beings, disconnected from the health of nonhuman nature and what the Lenape people refer to as Kahèsëna Hàki (Mother Earth). For the Lenape and other American Indian nations, as well as many Indigenous communities globally, the border between the body and the earth, between human and nonhuman, is more fluid than in Western knowledge systems. Since the human rights framework is historically shaped by Western ideologies that support a narrative in which humans dominate nature, the right to health invariably reflects this perspective. What would the right to health look like if we delinked it from Euro-American conceptualizations of human/nonhuman and instead drew on Lenape knowledge systems? More specifically, in the context of climate change, where the health of humans is dependent on the health of the planet, can the right to health be reimagined through Lenape epistemologies to protect the health of nonhuman nature?
Link to article: https://www.hhrjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2469/2023/06/ahmed.pdf
#RHODESMUSTFALL: HOW A DECOLONIAL STUDENT MOVEMENT IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH INSPIRED EPISTEMIC DISOBEDIENCE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
African Studies Review, June 2020
When the #RhodesMustFall (#RMF) movement erupted at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in March 2015, it not only sparked the proliferation of student movements across South Africa, but also led to the formation of #RMF at the University of Oxford and similar movements at universities in the United States. By drawing on ninety-eight interviews with various actors involved in both movements, Ahmed's empirical research contributes to the limited academic literature on the connections between the #RMF movements in Cape Town and in Oxford. The example of the #RMF movement in Cape Town inspired the #RMF Oxford movement to challenge the epistemic architecture of the University of Oxford.
