Refusing Sustainable Development: Decolonial Curriculum Making

This event is part of the School of Education's Bristol Conversations in Education research seminar series. These seminars are free and open to the public.

Hosted by the Education in Small States Research Group (ESSRG)and the Centre for Comparative and International Research in Education (CIRE)

Speaker: Kate Matzopoulos (Doctoral Researcher, University of Bath, UK)

Refusing “Sustainable Development”: A Relational, Decolonial Approach to Curriculum-Making with the Ju/’hoansi of Nhoma, Namibia

International education discourse often centres the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as the default framework for strengthening education systems, especially within small states. Yet the dominance of “sustainable development” risks flattening difference and universalising a singular trajectory of progress grounded in colonial histories of measurement, modernisation, and intervention. This presentation draws from ongoing curriculum co-development with the Ju/’hoansi community of Nhoma, Namibia, to explore what becomes possible when education is approached through relation rather than development. 

Working with Ju/’hoansi Elders, teachers, and knowledge keepers has required refusing development as the assumed horizon of educational change. Instead of fitting Indigenous knowledge into SDG indicators—indicators that continue to position communities as lacking or “on the way” toward externally defined ideals, much like earlier policy regimes in Namibia—this work asks what education becomes when local philosophies determine purpose, content, and method. In this relational, land based approach, sustainability is not a target to be achieved but a way of living practiced over millennia, embedded in reciprocity, ethical interdependence, and deep ecological practices that refuses being mapped onto bordered sustainable development metrics. 

For small states navigating the pressure to align with global development agendas, this raises generative questions: What forms of learning emerge when sustainability is not tied to development? What possibilities open when education is grounded in reciprocity rather than reform? And how might decolonial, community-rooted approaches unsettle the assumed universality of “sustainable development” itself? 

Biographical details: 

Kate Matzopoulos is a PhD student in the Department of Education at the University of Bath. Her research explores decolonising education through Indigenous knowledge systems. She is currently working in collaboration with a Ju/’hoansi community in Nhoma, Namibia, to co-create a curriculum rooted in their onto-epistemologies. With a background in theatre education, Kate is passionate about creative and unconventional research dissemination, using artistic and participatory methods to challenge traditional academic structures. Alongside her research, she serves as co-chair of the Decolonising Education Collective (DEC) at the university, working to bridge theory and practice, foster critical dialogue, and drive institutional change. Her academic, professional, and advocacy work centre on Indigenous rights, educational equity, and the role of the arts in social transformation.