Beyond disciplinary boundaries: speaking back to critical knowledges, liberation, and community

This article explores critical directions for forging new disciplinary traditions within community psychology, as discussed by a panel at the conclusion of the 6th International Conference on Community Psychology (ICCP 2016). The conference itself was constructed as an enactment of a decolonizing approach, looking at the entire globalized system from the African continent and centring knowledges produced by Africans and the diaspora. Several panellists were invited to offer their reflections on the emerging discussions, and absences or silences they observed at the conference, as well as how community research and action can develop a research and teaching programme that is liberatory. Panellists’ comments pointed to the importance of the decolonization project globally and the implications of decoloniality for community research and action. The challenge for community research and action is to build alliances and networks across space and time, and with various social movements. The discipline needs to centre and draw out the voices of those who have been excluded, to retrieve and reclaim ways of knowing, being, and doing because these are key to tackling the coloniality of power and to forging new ways of doing ethical and just community research and action.