Embodying decoloniality within community psychology research and evaluation practices

Community Psychology (CP) reflects diverse approaches and practices, yet many approaches continue to reproduce colonial assumptions about what constitutes valid knowledge. As Community Psychologists working in Canada, Egypt, México, and the United States, we have navigated these tensions across our professional journeys. Drawing from our distinct contexts and lived experiences, we offer a reflexive, collaborative case study examining how colonial logics shape how we approach our research and practice, and how we attempt to work differently within (and despite) existing constraints. Our reflections interrogate our understanding of decoloniality, practices and approaches we use to embody it, why we use them, and the challenges of reconciling with embodied, intuitive, relational, and community-centered ways of knowing, being, and doing. Individually, Aaron Stewart is configuring how to work within conventional academic and evaluative paradigms while simultaneously creating space for community-rooted ways of strengthening local social ecologies; Salma explores the intersections between different organizational forms and social change, as well as more holistic and regenerative pathways to change; and Cari centers love, kindness, and stories as evaluative practice. Through individual and collective reflection, we trace the doubts, disruptions, and adaptations involved in delinking from dominant epistemologies embedded in the Colonial Matrix of Power. We discuss emerging practices that cultivate relational accountability, center community wisdom, and foster cultures of love, kindness, and systemic change.