...because light always filters through the canopy
J.R. Korpa ©
Supporting scholars, one ray at a time. Holding space for under-addressed issues and difficult conversations. Reframing narratives that nourish networks of care, connection, 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.
Francesco Ungaro ©
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 – is embedded within broader superstructures, for example the 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
training, 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 experience.
We work with students and early career academics 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 conceptualisation, planning, budgeting;
– confidential guidance matters regarding mentoring and student supervision;
– 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:
– 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, 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. On-site events can be planned well ahead if in Germany, the UK, Ghana, Sri Lanka, and/or South Africa.
Because to humanize means to socially nourish, intellectually enliven, and internally push for ways in which you extend your own sense of worth and value, while recognizing how boundaries might be further pushed and transgressed through: