Handbook of Decolonial Community Psychology

This handbook offers refined interpretations of decolonial thought, methodologies, and practices in community psychology. As a representative mapping of the broad range of decolonial cosmovisions, experiences, and praxes in community psychology and allied disciplines around the globe, it brings together contributions from North America, Latin America, Europe, Oceania, Africa, and Asia. It offers an overview of community psychology with a decolonial focus and from a transnational perspective, transcending intellectual, geographical, and cultural borders, and constraining identities, affirming and celebrating the unique identities, experiences, and positions of its contributors within the global landscape of knowledge and politics.

The handbook illuminates the dynamic intersections between resistance and colonial legacies, foregrounding the enduring struggles against settler colonialism and racial capitalism across diverse geographies, temporalities, and histories. Underscoring the urgency of addressing inter-connected local and global challenges, such as land rights, livelihoods, and dignified existence, it offers hopeful yet critical perspectives on radical social justice struggles around the globe.

The volume brings together contributions from scholars, academics, educators, researchers, practitioners, activists, and community collaborators, and its chapters range in style and format. Some are more aligned with academic writing, while others - in the spirit of decolonizing disciplinary logics - are structured through more undisciplined, less constrained writing forms. Each author was invited to question the coloniality of power in and beyond community psychology. As such, the handbook contains productions that trouble the manifestations of coloniality both in the past and in the present, as well as in the different territories of the Majority World, particularly within settler colonial nation-states.

As a seminal work, the Handbook of Decolonial Community Psychology will further define and shape the contours of knowledge in decolonial community psychology, and inspire new generations of scholars, practitioners, students, and community organizers to advance the field with innovative ideas and transformative practices.

Christopher C. Sonn, PhD is a Professor at Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia on the land of the Wurundjeri of the Kulin nation. He is a fellow of and Deputy Director (Research Training) the Institute of Health and Sport. His research is concerned with understanding and changing dynamics of oppression and resistance, examining structural violence such as racism, and its effects on social identities, intergroup relations and belonging. He holds a Visiting Professorship at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. He is co-editor of Creating Inclusive Knowledges and Decoloniality and Epistemic Justice in Contemporary Community Psychology, and co-author of Social Psychology and Everyday Life, and Associate Editor of the American Journal of Community Psychology and Community Psychology in Global Perspective.

Jesica Siham Fernández is an Assistant Professor in the Ethnic Studies Department at Santa Clara University, and the author of the book "Growing Up Latinx: Coming of Age in a Time of Contested Citizenship" (NYU Press, 2021). She received her PhD in Social Psychology and Latin American & Latinx Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Grounded in a decolonial feminist praxis, she engages critical PAR paradigms and approaches to support Latinx communities, youth, and communities of color in actualizing collective sociopolitical wellbeing, and transformative justice. As a teacher-scholar-activist, Jesica’s praxis is rooted in a commitment to racial justice and anti-oppression toward decolonial liberation.

James Ferreira Moura Jr. is an Adjunct Professor at the Institute of Humanities and Letters of the University of International Integration of Afro-Brazilian Lusophony. Professor of the Psychology Doctoral Program at the Federal University of Ceará. PhD in Psychology at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). Fulbright Visiting Professor at Boston College, United States(US). He is co-editor of the book Psychosocial of Implications of Poverty (2019). He coordinates the Network of Studies and Confrontations of Poverty, Discrimination and Resistance (reaPODERE), which develops activities of critical teaching, research, and collaborative extension. He conducts research mainly on the following themes: Community Psychology, Public Policy, Poverty, Shame/Humiliation, Interseccionalty and Decolonial Studies.

Monica Eviandaru Madyaningrum is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Psychology, Sanata Dharma University, Indonesia. She holds a PhD degree in community psychology from the School of Health and Biomedicine, Victoria University, Australia, where she also did her master program. Her research and publications are in the areas of community psychology, community empowerment, participatory methodologies and disability studies. In addition to her academic position, she has been involved in developing a support group for families of children with multiple disabilities in Yogyakarta Province, Indonesia.

Nick Malherbe is a researcher at Institute for Social and Health Sciences, University of South Africa and South African Medical Research Council-University of South Africa Masculinity and Health Research Unit. His research interests include culture, psychological praxis, and visual methods.