In Conversation with Syed Farid Alatas, Ibrar Bhatt & Shuchen Xiang (held at the SRHE, London)

Title: In Conversation With Syed Farid Alatas: Re-Thinking Knowledge, Intellectual Canons, And The Decolonisation Of Academia This was an event held at the Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE) in London. In this three-way discussion, Professor Alatas shares insights from his work on integrating non-Western epistemologies into mainstream academic discourse, drawing on thinkers such as Ibn Khaldun and José Rizal, among others. The panel explore how western – and westernising – academic curricula have marginalised particular voices, and discuss the importance of integrating alternative perspectives to challenge the dominance of Eurocentric frameworks. Alatas also addresses the issue of ‘captive minds’ and the internalisation of intellectual frameworks that devalue non-Eurocentric knowledge systems and thus stymie pluralism. Syed Farid Alatas is Professor of Sociology at the National University of Singapore. He headed the Department of Malay Studies at NUS from 2007 till 2013. He lectured at the University of Malaya in the Department of Southeast Asian Studies prior to joining NUS. Professor Alatas has authored numerous books and articles, including Ibn Khaldun (Oxford University Press, 2013); Applying Ibn Khaldun: The Recovery of a Lost Tradition in Sociology (Routledge, 2014), and (with Vineeta Sinha) Sociological Theory Beyond the Canon (Palgrave, 2017). He has a forthcoming book entitled Decolonial Thought from the Malay World. His areas of interest are the sociology of Islam, social theory, religion and reform, intra- and inter-religious dialogue, the critique of Eurocentrism, and the promotion of autonomous knowledge. Shuchen Xiang (项舒晨) is Professor of philosophy at Xidian university (Xi’an, China). She is the author of two monographs, A Philosophical Defense of Culture: Perspectives from Confucianism and Cassirer (SUNY, 2021), Chinese Cosmopolitanism: The History and Philosophy of an Idea (Princeton, 2023), she also co-edited The Islamic-Confucian Synthesis in China (Rowman & Littlefield). She is currently working on her third monograph, A More Complete Humanism: A Confucian Alternative to the Liberal-Capitalist Subject. Ibrar Bhatt is Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) at the School of Social Sciences, Education & Social Work at Queen’s University Belfast (Northern Ireland, UK). His research interests encompass applied linguistics, higher education, and digitalisation. His prior work includes A Semiotics of Muslimness in China, Critical Perspectives on Teaching in the Multilingual University, The Epistemology of Deceit, Academics Writing: The Dynamics of Knowledge Creation, Assignments as Controversies: Digital Literacy & Writing in Classroom Practice, as well as many published research articles on similar subjects. He is currently writing his next monograph Heritage Literacy in the Lives of Chinese Muslims, which will be published soon with Bloomsbury.