Social research through the lived experiences of Global South researchers: epistemic contributions from the South

Abstract

This editorial introduces a special issue on Social Research through Lived Experiences: Epistemic Contributions from the Global South, which advances methodological debates by examining how scholars’ lived realities are mobilised as methodological resources rather than treated as background context. While Global South knowledge systems remain marginalised within dominant academic structures, the contributions do not simply adopt established qualitative approaches such as autoethnography, storytelling, or indigenous frameworks; instead, they critically rework and enact these approaches as part of decolonial methodological practice, reshaping how research design, reflexivity, ethics, and analytical authority are configured. The papers demonstrate how lived experience operates as a site of methodological analysis through which positionality, epistemic intersubjectivity, and institutional power relations are made visible across diverse geopolitical and academic contexts. Collectively, the contributions engage tensions within co-creation, South – South and North – South collaborations, and the normative expectations of academic knowledge production. Rather than documenting exclusion or advocating change in abstract terms, this special issue shows how Global South researchers are actively reshaping social research methodology by expanding what counts as methodological rigour, whose knowledge is authorised, and how knowledge can be generated under uneven epistemic conditions.