INHALL: Miltos Hadjiosif - De-colonisation and Re-enchantment

In this talk, Dr Hadjiosif will try to destabilise the idea that decolonisation is a measurable process, or that it can have an agreed upon end point. I will do so by invoking meraki and post-qualitative epistemologies in order to communicate (and perhaps demonstrate) how colonised and colonising subjects are constituted through discourse, embodiment, but also spirit. He will also share some lived experiences of enacting and sharing a de-colonisation agenda in my scholarship, teaching, and learning.

Related to de-colonisation, is the concept of re-enchantment, which has been taken up by prominent post-Jungian scholars as one direction that Jungian ideas can take in order to connect with neglected aspects of psychoanalytic thinking: social inequalities, epistemic homelessness, and community building.

You might have your own (re)actions to this material, as we lean on ideas drawn from critical and indigenous scholarship and play with notions and facets of de-colonisation and re-enchantment. I hope to conclude this talk by making way for audience responses and the nurturing of a radical affect: togetherness in the face of potential discomfort and confusion.

Dr Miltos Hadjiosif is a Senior Lecturer in Counselling & Community Psychology. His work centres critical reflexivity, a quality that is systematically assaulted by mainstream Psychology and the neo-liberal university. He is the co-founder of the Community Psychology Festival and the leader of UWE’s Critical Autoethnography Network. Miltos won the BPS Best Supervisor/Mentor Award (2019) and has been nominated several times for the outstanding teaching award at UWE. He works very closely with his doctoral students to forge soul connections and communities of practice. Together, they challenge counselling psychology’s complacency and advocate for decolonisation, re-enchantment, and a soul perspective. Miltos believes that these processes/orientations can start with the self of the scholar-practitioner.