The Mouth Journal: Ways of Producing Knowledge and Publishing Beyond the Established Academic Norms
3 July 2025 I 12:00 (CEST)
Hybrid Event
Presenter: Andrea Hollington (University of Cologne)
Abstract:
Despite growing efforts to decolonialize academia, taking southern epistemologies into account and including alternative ways of knowledge production, academic publishing often remains stuck in established processes and practices that exclude people as well as forms of knowledge production that do not conform to the norm. This talk will introduce The Mouth Journal, a non-conventional online journal that publishes critical studies on language, culture and society by including different formats, epistemologies, languages and ways of presenting knowledge and research. We founded the Mouth Journal in 2017, because we are convinced that thoughts can be expressed in multiple ways. This journal supports the openness to forms of texts and to practices of language, which we see as essential for publishing a wide variety of ideas, expressions and concepts. The Mouth Journal positions itself against (recent) developments in academic publishing such as increasing levels of gatekeeping, the exclusion of linguistic and stylistic variation, the pressure on writers to conform to neoliberal practices of text production, as well as the constant push for flexibilization and efficiency. Copyediting, proofreading, and peer-reviewing, as useful as they may be, are often also used as means to marginalize and exclude ways of knowing, of transmitting and circulating knowledge and therefore need to be critically assessed. We are sensitive to positionalities and to the ways in which stories can be told in different ways, as well as to different forms of theorizing in various languages and societies other than the ones in which we live. Attempting to learn from others, we have been trying to create a journal that allows for multiple forms of expressions and texts, which also includes podcasts and visual material that transmit knowledges in a variety of ways. In the process of editing The Mouth Journal, we have constantly encountered challenges, pitfalls and opportunities of academic publishing and knowledge production that we would like to discuss during this conversation.
Venue
Room 3.03
Global South Studies Center (GSSC)
Classen-Kappelmann-Straße 24
50931 Cologne
Zoom
Please register via e-mail to co-producingknowledge
uni-koeln.de for digital participation and Zoom details.
"Informal Conversations" is an event series organized by the Global South Studies Center's "Co-Producing Knowledge" Thematic Area.