Decolonizing research imagination: a journey of reshaping research epistemology and ontology

Epistemology has been recognized as a useful conceptual tool to explore how knowledge has been produced and/or reproduced in higher education research and its linkages to hidden global geopolitics and historical forces. The topic has attracted considerable attention in the literature, particularly that of scholars in the Global South (Canagarajah, 2008; Chen, 2010; Kenway & Fahey, 2008; Rizvi, 2006a, 2006b; Santos, 2014). Equally, utilizing the researcher’s self to carve out the complex trajectories of the researcher’s ontology and epistemology seems to add value to the research and debate on this topic. This research topic especially applies to researchers who have crossed the border and lived and worked abroad. “Educators working in international contexts encounter these ontological and epistemological borders daily and are brought to grapple with the role of Otherness in their scholarly practices,” remarks Kester (2021). In this paper, we draw on autoethnography as a research methodology to answer two key questions: What sorts of ontological and epistemological transformations might educators experience during long-term periods abroad? and How might these transformations initiate decolonial moves in regard to educational pedagogy, policy, and practice? We critically reflect on and thus manifest the journeys of Dr. Nhai Nguyen and Dr. Yeow-Tong Chia—diasporic academics in Australia. Regarding this journey, these scholars provide insights into how they decolonize their research imagination, regain their research agency, and thereby transform their research epistemology and ontology. They finally put forward some implications for shaping a defiant research imagination for novice researchers.