The UNESCO Chair on Refugee Integration through Education, Languages, and Arts (RIELA) at the University of Glasgow has a podcast series that brings sounds to make you think about integration, languages, culture, society and identity. A collection of academic musings, poetry, lesser heard voices and personal stories for you to enjoy and expand you horizons with. In short: a podcast for everyone with stories from the world, about the world, released fortnightly.
In their latest series, they focus on the concept of decolonial love. In this podcast series, we, Dr Mukuka Kasonde and Dr Brice Catherin continue our exploration of the concept of decolonial love which we first engaged with as an art exhibition in 2025 (see details below). In conversation with three guests — Prof. Caroline Lenette (UNSW, Australia), Prof. Alison Lenette (University of Glasgow, UK), and Dr. Tawona Sithole, better known as Ganyamatope (University of Glasgow, UK), we critically reflected on how to imagine and enact forms of love that unsettle colonial hierarchies and open space for transformation.
In the first episode, Professor Caroline Lennette elaborated on the absence of love in the colonial project, but also on how the concept of love had been twisted in order to uproot indigenous children, stolen from their families in the name of “education” and “civilisation”.
In the second episode, Professor Alison Phipps discussed the notion of liberation theology and its potential, not to repair the irreparable, but to fight oppressions. She speaks of how an understanding of love as expressed by liberation theology involves a critical reading of sacred texts and in context.
In the third and last episode to date, Ganyamatope speaks of love in action by sharing with us his reflections of growing up with the love of his nuclear and extended family. We also discuss language and the importance of remaining flexible in our thinking about how we communicate on decoloniality.
We loved that every contributor had a different understanding of, and vision for, decolonial love. Our hope is that these perspectives stimulate further conversations. Podcasts, artworks or otherwise: this is something we will gladly resume.
Podcast links to the series on decolonial love:
Link to episode 1: https://soundcloud.com/unescorila/e88
Link to episode 2: https://soundcloud.com/unescorila/e89
Link to episode 3: https://soundcloud.com/unescorila/e90
More about Prof. Caroline Lenette: www.unsw.edu.au/staff/caroline-lenette
More about Dr Mukuka Kasonde: www.linkedin.com/in/mukukakasonde/
More about Dr Brice Catherin: www.bricecatherin.org
More about the Decolonial Love exhibition: indd.adobe.com/view/9b19dbd9-ebd…a3c2-6b040d3446d9
Music: Christophe Schweizer (Switzerland) and Able Chanda (Banthu Ndiwo Traditional Dance Group, Zambia)
Please subscribe to get notified of new episodes coming out! Full show notes can be found on the University of Glasgow’s UNESCO RIELA pages: bit.ly/thesoundsofintegration