Colonialism is the policy or practice of acquiring full or partial political control over someone else’s land, occupying it with settlers, and exploiting it economically. It operates discursively to affect the thoughts and practices of the coloniser, the colonised and their descendants.

A community of practice is a group of people with a shared set of practices, who learn from each other.

Core/periphery is a concept that refers to the division of the world into two unequal parts: the core, represented by developed countries of the global north, and a periphery, comprising developing countries in the global south.

Craft is understood here as a way of thinking about research as a creative, improvised and skilful practice. This provides a counternarrative to the scientistic notion of research as the mastery of technique (see scientific method).

Cultural imperialism employs the logic that one cultural group is more ‘civilised’ than another, with a view to gaining or maintaining unequal power relations between the two.