This essay is part of Ways of working for more peaceful futures: A global health humanities roundtable, an effort through the Future of Peace program to bring perspectives from global health humanities into conversation with questions of peace. Read Michelle E. Anderson’s introduction to the series, or explore the full roundtable paper bringing all six contributions together.
Born and raised in a South African township during apartheid, I experienced oppression and state violence firsthand. Those experiences shaped my commitment to dignity, justice, and peace. As a researcher from the Global South working within Global North institutions while remaining connected to communities in the South, I argue that peace in global health cannot be separated from the power relations through which knowledge is produced, valued, and shared. Drawing on Ubuntu and decolonial thought, I suggest that a more peaceful future depends on research relationships grounded in humility, reciprocity, shared authority, and accountability.
Unequal power in global health partnerships
The language of partnership is now common in global health, yet partnership alone does not eliminate power imbalances. Many Global North-Global South collaborations continue to reflect colonial histories and inequalities in funding, publication opportunities, mobility, and decision-making authority. Researchers from the North often arrive with grants, timelines, and established theoretical frameworks, while local scholars and communities are frequently asked to support implementation rather than shape research priorities.
Coloniality persists not only through overt actions but also through assumptions about whose knowledge is privileged. Decolonial approaches challenge us to ask: Who defines research priorities? Who benefits from the research? Whose knowledge and theories are recognized? Whose labour is valued? Who owns data and receives professional recognition? These are questions of justice that reveal whether global health research is transforming inequitable relationships or continuing to reproduce them.
Working between North and South
For researchers from the Global South working in the Global North, these dynamics can be particularly complex as we often occupy an in-between space. While Northern institutions provide access to resources, funding, and influence, our communities of origin continue to be treated as research sites rather than equal partners.
Although this position can be uncomfortable, it also creates an opportunity for ethical leadership. We can challenge dominant assumptions, translate across knowledge systems, and advocate for research that remains accountable not only to funders and journals but also to the communities whose lived realities make the work possible. Rather than facilitating extraction, we can help create more equitable forms of knowledge production.
Ubuntu and a relational approach to research
Ubuntu offers a powerful framework for imagining a more peaceful future in global health. Often expressed as umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu (“a person is a person through other people”), Ubuntu reminds us that knowledge and human flourishing are fundamentally relational. Research achievements are incomplete if they fail to acknowledge the communities, students, and colleagues whose labour and insights made them possible. Ubuntu challenges the individualism that often underpins academic prestige and instead frames scholarship as a shared moral practice grounded in mutual responsibility. From this perspective, peace is not simply the absence of conflict. It is the presence of respectful relationships, shared dignity, and meaningful recognition of others as knowledge holders and partners in inquiry.
Global health humanities as a bridge to peace
Global health humanities can help foster these relationships by expanding how we understand knowledge and evidence. While global health often prioritizes measurement and technical expertise, the humanities draw attention to the human dimensions of illness, care, language, history, and belonging.
Communities are holders of knowledge, archives of experience, and makers of meaning, and not simply locations where health problems occur. Engaging communities ethically requires understanding how people make sense of suffering, healing, and hope within their own cultural contexts.
Humanities approaches, such as narrative, oral history, and ethical reflection, create space for perspectives that might otherwise be overlooked. Combined with Ubuntu, they encourage humility, listening, and shared interpretation. They do not replace public health science; rather, they make science more accountable to the people and communities it seeks to serve.
Practices for a more peaceful research future
Peace is not the avoidance of difficult conversations about colonialism, race, privilege, funding, or authorship. It requires actively rebuilding research relationships on more equitable terms.
Several practices can help move global health in this direction:
- Begin with community priorities and interpretations rather than imported assumptions;
- Ensure equitable approaches to authorship, funding, data governance, and decision-making;
- Recognize Indigenous knowledge, oral histories, community memory, and lived experience as legitimate sources of evidence and theory; and
- Remain accountable beyond publication and sustain relationships after projects conclude.
Meaningful change also requires institutional action. Funders should support community governance, universities should reward reciprocal scholarship, and journals should recognize community-based and multilingual knowledge.
Ubuntu reminds us that our humanity is interconnected. If global health is to contribute meaningfully to peace, it must transform the relationships through which knowledge is produced. By addressing power imbalances and fostering reciprocity, dignity, and epistemic justice, research can become not only a tool for improving health but also a pathway toward more just and peaceful futures.
