Conference Program

This research proposes a situated case study (Yin, 2018) at the Colombian Amazonian triple border in Leticia - next to Brazil and Peru - aiming at understanding how forms of epistemic, pedagogical, and political agency are produced among historically excluded subjects. The study analyzes the pedagogical, cultural, and institutional mediations involved in the production, circulation, and legitimation of knowledge, particularly within territorially oriented higher education programmes (Mato, 2012).

The category of “mediation” is understood as the set of mechanisms, instruments, relationships, and practices operating between subjects, knowledges, institutions, and territories, enabling or constraining knowledge (co)production and circulation. From this perspective, mediation is not conceived as a neutral process of translation, but rather as a space of epistemological dispute shaped by power relations, coloniality, and disobedience (Mignolo, 2000).

Rather than approaching the territory as exceptional or “exotic,” this research treats it as a significant case capable of illuminating principles that are transferable to other border and migration contexts. In particular, it seeks to rethink pedagogy beyond restricted notions of “interculturality,” often reduced to multicultural or inclusion-based frameworks. Instead, pedagogy is conceptualized as a formative process oriented toward knowledge coproduction, autonomy, emancipation, and social transformation, especially for subjects experiencing systemic oppression (Escobar, 2020; Walsh, 2009; hooks, 2021).

The study is situated within the fields of critical pedagogy, critical interculturality, and decolonial pedagogy. It engages with the tradition of engaged sociology and Latin American emancipatory education, particularly the contributions by Orlando Fals Borda (2015), Paulo Freire (2008), Carlos António Brandão (2003). It also draws on scholarship on sociocultural mediations and decolonial epistemologies to examine how institutional and political conditions structure access to and recognition of knowledge in higher education (Mato, 2012).

Methodologically, the research adopts a qualitative approach based on case study and Participatory Action Research (PAR) (Yin, 2018; Fals Borda & Rahman, 1991). Data collection combines in-depth semi-structured interviews, focus groups, participant observation, and document analysis. Fieldwork is organized in three phases: an initial exploratory stage; a more extended and in-depth phase; and a final stage focusing on restitution of findings and community dialogue, oriented toward collective projection and action.

The case presented is linked to the Universidad Nacional de Colombia’ Special Admissions Programme with a Territorial Approach aimed at young people, including members of Indigenous communities. This allows for examining how generational, pedagogical, and institutional mediations operate within a transborder Amazonian context.

The project seeks to contribute to rethinking pedagogy in crossborder settings (Anzaldúa, 2016) beyond frameworks of inclusion or hospitality, recognizing historically oppressed subjects as epistemic and political actors and proposing transferable principles for higher education and social transformation in other crossborder and migratory contexts.