...because light always filters through the canopy
Supporting scholars, one ray at a time. Holding space for under-addressed issues and difficult conversations. Reframing narratives that nourish networks of care, inclusivity, and belonging in (and beyond) the canopied layers of academic life. This is what we would like to call the Komorebi Effect.
about us
The Komorebi Collective for Humanizing Academia (KOCHA) is a not-for-profit academic coaching and co-learning service. We work with institutions, early career scholars, and students that are often underserved within structures of higher education and research. As womxn academics of colour ourselves, we are particularly keen on partnering BIPOC/BME, minoritized, and other underrepresented groups within and beyond European academic settings and cultures of learning.
For individuals, KOCHA sets out to create a safe, confidential, and supportive space through one-on-one mentoring that is online.
For institutions, we work with small groups by offering customised interactive training workshops, field schools, and discussion circles that are inclusive and pedagogically-oriented. We generate tailored content that is experiential, hands-on, and rooted in real life case studies.
Why Humanizing Academia?
To give meaning to our own work and presence by showing up for ourselves, whether it be study, research, teaching, project leadership, or administration.
To encourage creative experimentation; and to broaden the very circumstances that we feel are enabling, while bringing together related currents such as conviviality and ethics of care, transdisciplinarity, decolonial thinking, and self-expression that tributes intersectional gendered, neurodiverse, transculatural and ability-based experience.
Similarly, we are intrigued by the many ways in which diverse boundaries can be crossed – between ‘art’ and ‘science’, research and praxis, classroom, fieldwork, and everyday life. It is these very possibilities from which KOCHA – as a transcultural learning initiative – was born.
©
Humanizing academic writing processes & self-expression via individualised "clinics" & group workshops on academic & multi-genre writing; dissertation & essay advising; hands-on training for developmental editing, line editing & manuscript proofing.
Humanizing international project management & equitable partnerships: workshops & discussion circles integrating principles of inclusive, decolonial, & transdisciplinary collaborations, knowledge co-production & project design/management models.
Humanizing Community-based Research: For natural scientists and interdisciplinary teams. Demystifying qualitative field-based, immersive, participatory methods, guidance on ethics & positionality; practical fieldwork planning; individual mentoring, especially womxn in the "field."
Humanizing inclusivity and belonging for institutions, project teams & team leads keen on un/re-learning ´intercultural´ biases, everyday practices & vernaculars; strategies for moving beyond tokenism and institutionalised lip service on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion requirements.
Getting Started
Institutionalised academia and centres of scientific knowledge production – as in the case of any institution – are embedded within broader superstructures. These structures may include the current funding landscape, national science politics, and educational governance. Our first step starts with recognizing your immediate setting and your unique position within that matrix.
For individuals, early careers researchers, faculty & grad students
(one-on-one consultations & coaching)
We are acutely aware of the fact that contractual early and mid career academics, including grad students, often lack a vibrant ecosystem of support and peer-based care. In addition, individuals often find themselves grappling with inner shadows such as performance anxiety, imposter syndrome, burnout, alongside a plethora of externally driven organisational factors, leaving little room for creative joy and personal flourishing. Adopting a strengths-based approach, we work at first and foremost honouring your own voice and unique set of experiences.
We work with early stage scholars and postgrad students seeking one-on-one consultations on general matters pertaining to everyday academic life, including specific aspects such as:
– sharpening individual writing and self-editing skills;
– dissertation ideation and planning;
– fieldwork advising (including conceptualisation, logistical planning, budgeting etc.);
– confidential guidance on matters regarding student supervision and advisor-student relations;
– general mentoring on book projects (proposals, pitching, contract negotiation).
In keeping with principles of the shared economy, our virtual consultations adopt a pay-as-you-wish model.
For groups & organisations – capacity development & advisory
Our collectively customised workshops focus on core facets of everyday academic life, and in interdisciplinary environments in particular. Core areas include:
– collaborative project design & management (equitable partnership-development, practices for knowledge co-generation; budget planning and resource allocation);
– qualitative research methods and other field-based approaches for community work for non-social scientists,
– academic writing and self-editing;
– Co-learning creative approaches to academic storytelling including film and other visual, multimodal methods.
– Diversity & Inclusion practices & policies, and rethinking organisational spaces for strengthening belonging.
Our workshops and individual consultations take place virtually and in-person. On-site events can be planned well ahead if in Germany and much of Europe, the UK, Ghana, Sri Lanka, and/or South Africa.
Image credits: J.R. Korpa, Epifania Amoo-Adare, Rapti Siriwardane-de Zoysa, Ferene Hovath, Mark Konig, Chris Montgomery, Christian Newman, & Francesco Ungaro.