Epistemic Authority, Centres, and Peripheries: Geopolitical Inequalities in Processes of Science-Making in Sub-Saharan African–West European Research Collaborations

International research collaborations (IRCs) are widely considered central to addressing environmental sustainability challenges. Historic, economic, social, and cultural inequalities, however, create global geopolitical hegemonies in which institutional, funding, and governance power is concentrated in more economically advantaged regions including Europe. These inequalities create asymmetrical epistemic authority in IRCs, mirroring centres and peripheries of science-making, as described by Science and Technology Studies (STS). Forest research is shaped by these inequalities yet requires sustainable socioenvironmental solutions. Although STS offers tools to examine how asymmetries shape knowledge-making in science, it has rarely explored how this emerges in everyday practices of sub-Saharan African (SSA)–West European forest IRCs, despite the significance of forests in SSA and documented pervasive inequalities between the two regions. I trace knowledge-making processes of five forest sustainability IRCs through a positioning analysis of meetings and fieldwork, complemented by interviews, showing how, and from where, collaborators shape ways of doing and knowing. European collaborators disproportionately shaped approaches while SSA collaborators adapted to European practices. Supporting conditions including fieldwork expertise and disproportionate persistence helped SSA approaches to be taken up, whereas European approaches operated as the default mode. SSA collaborators shaped practices outside meeting spaces less visibly and faced barriers to equal participation due to sociocultural and material factors, with SSA women encountering layered gender and geography inequalities. Insights show how daily knowledge-making processes recreate and counter power asymmetries, encouraging reflection and practical action on how IRCs can address inequalities.