Heike Winschiers-Theophilus on global south research, reviewer bias, abstract vs lived diversity, & pluriversality

Mar 9, 2023

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This conversation continues the reflections on our peer reviewing practices, this time bringing in the experiences of someone from the Global South. Here I am speaking with Prof Heike Winschiers-Theophilus. Heike is a Professor in the Faculty of Computing & Informatics, at Namibia University of Science & Technology. Heike shares the many challenges she and her colleagues have faced in the form of reviewer assumptions and biases, often informed from a Global North mindset as the default ‘mainstream’ gold standard. She also talks about the challenges in getting their research to be equally valued in making contributions to knowledge creation, and not just accepting their projected positions as exotic others and mere users of knowledge. This is also exacerbated by the exclusionary implications of open access for them, and the difficulties in getting their work more internationally visible and cited.

“At times I don’t understand what is happening in the Global North. I don’t understand the issues and conversations.”

“How much context must we give so we can override assumptions?”

“You are exotic therefore your value comes through being different. But that’s not the case.”

“It’s still keeping the ‘mainstream’ as the goalposts but that’s not what diversity is supposed to be like. We are equivalent to any other”

“Reviewers explicitly write that actually: ‘we understand there should be diversity but you don’t compare to mainstream’”

“I don’t think people can imagine we do serious research here.”

“Do they [reviewers] really read our study, do they even look at the academic value of it. Or is it becoming a political discussion now.”

“We should remember our own western bias. But reviewers keep on forgetting that. Because now they are in this power position.”

“Context and assumptions … when I write I have to think, who can be the reviewer and how much must I write to convince the reviewer…to override whatever assumptions the person has. And it becomes really complicated.”

“We are no longer part of the whole knowledge creation process. [… Open access] is totally counterproductive for us. And that’s scary.”

Overview (times approximate): [Full TRANSCRIPT coming soon]

0:05 Welcome to Changing Academic Life.

0:30 Intro to the episode

03:17 Welcome

Heike introduces herself, how she came to Namibia, the challenges doing a PhD, and now working as a professor in Namibia and integrating issues around linguistics, AI and culture

09:40 Ways she experiences some of the cultural tensions giving example of developing software and the participatory design techniques that didn’t work in this context, leading to shift in research focus onto methodologies and indigenous knowledge.

…The importance of asking questions

14:42 Being fully immersed in Namibia and now not understand the issues and conversations in the Global North and how this makes communication about what she does here harder and harder.

15:57 Example of these issues are important in the Global North but not important for her – the difference between learned or abstract empathy but not lived. Tolerance as an example. Diversity and inclusion also. The dissonance between behaviour and abstract discussions.

18:27 How this plays out in the review process. Heike goes through some of their recent review experiences – illustrating a lot of assumptions e.g., issues around diversity, different expectations about the value they ‘should’ deliver being ‘exotic’

22:27 Keeping the [WEIRD] ‘mainstream’ as the goalposts and reviewers expecting them to compare to the ‘mainstream’ despite espousing diversity as a principle. Yet WEIRD is not even the majority on the planet.

25:07 Anchored in views, eg from media, that Africa cannot be progressive or come up with innovations.

26:25 And opinions being even worse than biased assumptions, being called colonisers which is really insulting, and the new form of apartheid ‘you are not allowed to use VR’

Telling the story of one particular paper and conference review experience

32:38 The power of the reviewers and in particular the 2AC, and the gamble of whether the 2AC likes it or not

34:15 The impact of these sorts of reviews on the people involved

36:49 The question of who can be their audience and who not, trying to anticipate and mitigate reviewer assumptions and bias, and the problems of anonymity for them

41”10 The challenges of visibility and getting cited, and the exclusive consequences of open access publishing when they don’t have national agreements or access to funds to pay to publish a paper, and are relegated to users not creators of knowledge.

45:09 Discussing different open access or publication models, and also the similar challenges of costs for conferences and what is missed there by not going

50:14 Pluraversality as an alternative for looking at different perspectives and that all fit… and also complicated to operationalize as an abstract concept

54:00 How to change our fundamental underlying perspectives – encouraging people to experience, come to Africa, see that there is real research happening, and more collaborations

58:06 It’s about individuals, the power is with the 1AC and 2AC, that we carefully choose our ACs and needing mentorship for ACs

1:01:49 And the extra challenges for people in the Global South who don’t have Heike’s experience; and the importance of national gatherings and the challenges getting these recognised

1:06:14 Wrapping up

1:07:36 My final reflections

1:09:53 End

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[Abbreviations; Acronyms]

PD: Participatory Design

CHI: Computer Human Interaction

1AC/2AC: Associate Chair roles in our SIGHI conference program committees, responsible for managing the reviews for a set of papers

VR: Virtual Reality

WEIRD people: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic

ACM: Association of Computing Machinery, a professional organisation

ACM SIGCHI: Special Interest Group for Computer Human Interaction https://sigchi.org