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Professor
Name: Veli Mitova
Location: Room 7, Floor 3 UJ on Empire
Faculty of Humanities, Rated Researchers Staff Members
Contact Details:
Tel: 011 559 3133
Email: vmitova@uj.ac.za
About Prof Veli Mitova
Veli is Professor in Philosophy and Director of the African Centre for Epistemology and Philosophy of Science at the University of Johannesburg. She is the PI of Philosophy through Indigenous Knowledge in the Global South (funded by the NIHSS) and a collaborator on Epistemic Reparations (funded by the Northwestern Buffet Institute). Veli works at the intersection of epistemology, ethics, and social epistemology. At the moment, her focus is on epistemic injustice, decolonising knowledge, and the ways in which phenomena such as white ignorance should make us rethink central normative-epistemology concepts like epistemic risk, blame, responsibility, and expertise. She is the author of Believable Evidence (CUP 2017), and the editor of Epistemic Decolonisation (2020) and of The Factive Turn in Epistemology (CUP 2018). Before joining the University of Johannesburg in 2015, Veli taught and researched at Universität Wien, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México, Rhodes University (her alma mater), and Cambridge (where she obtained her PhD).
Supervision areas
Veli welcomes Honours, MA and PhD students who would like to work in any area of epistemology, social epistemology, and feminist epistemology, especially on epistemic injustice, the decolonisation of knowledge, and the epistemology of AI.
Check out African Centre for Epistemology and Philosophy of Science to see if what we do is a good fit and you have what it takes to join ACEPS vibrant Team & PostGrads!
Youtubes you can watch to get an idea of Veli’s work.
Recent Publications
Book
2017 Believable Evidence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Edited works
Forthcoming Epistemic Reparations and the Right to Be Known. Special Issue of Philosophical Studies.
Forthcoming (with P. Benton and D. Moletsane) Indigenous Knowledge Systems and AI. Special Issue of AI&Society.
2022 (with R. McIntyre and S. Salem) Skepticism, Relativism, Pluralism. Special Issue of Inquiry. Routledge.
2020 Epistemic Decolonisation. Special Issue of Philosophical Papers, 49 (2).
2018 The Factive Turn in Epistemology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Papers
Forthcoming Motivated Irrationality, Epistemic Innocence, White Ignorance. Philosophical Topics.
2025 Decolonial Epistemic-Authority Reparations. Episteme. DOI: 10.1017/epi.2025.2.
2025 De-idealising Epistemology through Collectivising. International Journal of Philosophical Studies. DOI: 10.1080/09672559.2025.2482906
2024 Can Theorising Epistemic Injustice Help Us Decolonise? Inquiry. DOI: 10.1080/0020174X.2024.2327489.
2024 (with Machery, E. et al.) A Puzzle About Knowledge Ascriptions. Noûs. http://doi.org/10.1111/nous.12515
2024 (with Rudnev, M. et al.) Dimensions of Wisdom Perception Across Twelve Countries on Five Continents. Nature Communications, 15: 6375. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-50294-0.
2024 (with Heseen, R. et al.) A Model of Faulty and Faultless Disagreement for Post-Hoc Assessments of Knowledge Utilization in Evidence-Based Policymaking. Scientific Reports. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-69012-3.
2024 (with Schneider, M. et al.) Science-Policy Research Collaborations Need Philosophers. Nature Human Behaviour. DOI: 10.1038/s41562-024-01892-x.
2024 (with Chukwu, E. et al.) Examining Self-described Policy-relevant Evidence Base for Policymaking: an Evidence Map of COVID-19 Literature. BMJ Public Health. doi:10.1136/ bmjph-2023-000694
2024 Wilful Hermeneutical Ignorance to the (Qualified) Rescue of Knowledge-first. In Logins, A. and Vollet, J. (Eds.) Putting Knowledge to Work. New York: Oxford University Press.
2024 Decolonising Experts. In Farina, M., Lavazza, A. and Pritchard, D. (Eds.) Expertise: Philosophical Perspectives (pp. 253–273). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2024 Social Group Moral Encroachment. Episteme, 20(4): 894-911.
2023 Socialising Epistemic Risk: on the Risks of Epistemic Injustice. Metaphilosophy, 54 (4): 539–552.
2023 A New Argument for the Non-Instrumental Value of Truth. Erkenntnis, 88: 1911–1933.
2023 Why Epistemic Decolonisation in Africa? Social Epistemology. DOI: 0.1080/02691728.2023.2184218.
2022 The Collective Epistemic Reasons of Social-identity Groups. Asian Journal of Philosophy, 1 (47). DOI: 10.1007/s44204-022-00051-1.
2022 (with R. McIntyre and S. Salem) Introduction to the special issue: Skepticism, Relativism, Pluralism. Inquiry. DOI: 10.1080/0020174X.2022.2135877.
2021 How to Decolonise Knowledge without Too Much Relativism. In Khumalo, S. (Ed.) Decolonisation as Democratisation (pp. 24–47). Cape Town: HSRC Press.
2020 Decolonising Knowledge Here and Now. Philosophical Papers, 49 (2): 191–212.
2020 Explanatory Injustice and Epistemic Agency. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 23 (5): 707–722.
2019 Either Epistemological or Metaphysical Disjunctivism. In Doyle, C., Milburn, J., and Pritchard, D. H. (Eds.) New Issues in Epistemological Disjunctivism (pp. 194–214). New York: Routledge.
2019 The Duty of Inquiry, or Why Othello Was a Fool. In Bourne, C. and Bourne, E. C. (Eds.) The Routledge Companion to Shakespeare and Philosophy (pp. 311–323). London: Routledge.
2018 Introduction: The Factive Turn. In Mitova, V. (Ed.) The Factive Turn in Epistemology (pp. 1–12). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Keynotes
2024 Irreparable Epistemic Wrongs. Epistemic Harms, Agency, and The Right to Be Known. Winnipeg, Canada.
2024 Descolonizando la filosofía: Lecciones de Sudáfrica. Epistemologías andinas y amazónicas, Lima, Peru.
2023 Decolonial Epistemic-Authority Reparations. Epistemic Blame and Epistemic Reparations, Brandon University, Canada.
2022 Decolonising Philosophy through XPhi. Final Geography of Philosophy Conference, Pittsburgh (online).
2022 Risky White People: The Epistemic Risks of Injustice. The Social and Political Dimensions of Epistemic Risk, University of Seville (online).
2021 Epistemic Decolonisation for Today’s Africa. Diversity Reading List and British Philosophical Association Online Series on Epistemic Decolonisation, LSE, UK (online).
2021 Is Epistemic Injustice White-People Stuff? Thinking at the border: Post- and decolonial theory and epistemic injustice. Oxford, UK (online).
2020 There Is Still Hope for Doxastic Motivational Internalism. Metaethics and Metaepistemology. Vienna (online).
2019 Either Metaphysical or Epistemological Disjunctivism. SUK, University of Zürich.
2019 How to Decolonise Knowledge without too Much Relativism. 2nd Annual PhiGs Workshop, Kent, UK.
2017 Believable Evidence. The Ontology of Reasons Workshop, University of Basel, Switzerland.
2017 Reasons are Us. Rhodes Philosophy Graduate Day, Rhodes University, SA.
Invited Talks (last 5 years)
2024 Why Epistemic Decolonisation in Africa?. Philosophy Lecture Series National Open University of Nigeria (online)
2024 Decolonial Epistemic-Authority Reparations. Epistemic Oppression. UQAM, Montreal, Canada.
2024 Decolonial Epistemic-Authority Reparations. Thinking from Everywhen: Philosophy, Indigenous Knowledge and Perspectives, Australian National University (ANU).
2024 Social Group Moral Encroachment. Thursday Seminar Series, School of Philosophy ANU.
2023 Decolonial Epistemic-Authority Reparations. Reparations, Decolonisation, and Just Transitions, New Delhi, Institute for Technology, India.
2023 Decolonial Epistemic-Authority Reparations. Epistemic Reparations and Blame. Winnipeg, Canada.
2023 Social Group Moral Encroachment. Episteme Annual Conference, Stone Town, Zanzibar.
2023 Social Group Moral Encroachment. Philosophy Department, University of Cologne, Germany.
2023 (with A. Akpan, C. Rybko, and A. Tobi) Epistemic Injustice in Data Tech. Global Data Justice. TILT, University of Tilburg, Holland.
2023 Decolonising Experts. Canada Chair for Epistemic Injustice, UQÀM, Canada (online).
2023 Decolonising Experts. Constructing Social Hierarchies, University of Melbourne.
2023 Does Epistemic Injustice Need Decolonising? Decolonising Epistemic Injustice, The Artic University, Tromsø, Norway.
2022 Decolonising Experts. African Epistemologies Advanced Seminar Series, Institute for Humanities in Africa, University of Cape Town (online).
2022 White Ignorance Calls for a Groupy Account of Epistemic Blame. ERC Group Agency Project Workshop, Vienna.
2022 Wilful Ignorance and Concept Travel. The Philosophy and Global Politics of Concept Travel Workshop, University of Basel.
2022 White Ignorance Undermines Internalism about Epistemic Blame. Vienna Analytic Forum, University of Vienna.
2022 White Ignorance Undermines Internalism about Epistemic Blame. Epistemic Wrongs Workshop, University of Zürich.
2022 The Vicious Cycle of Epistemic Injustice. PhilExpo. Zürich Society for Philosophy, Switzerland.
2022 White Ignorance Undermines Internalism about Epistemic Blame. Royal Institute of Philosophy, University of Kent (online).
2022 Socialising Epistemic Risk. Philosophy Speaker Series, University of Liverpool, UK (online).
2021 Is Epistemic Injustice White-People Stuff? 6th SOAS World Philosophies Lecture, SOAS University of London, UK (online).
2021 Motivated Irrationality, Epistemic Innocence, and White Ignorance. The Value of Irrationality. University of Zürich, Switzerland.
2021 Desuperiorising epistemic justice in the service of knowledge-decolonisation. A Call for the Desuperiorization of Philosophy, and the Foundation of Superaltern Studies, University of Paderborn, Germany (online).
2021 Decolonising Knowledge: what, why, how. What Is Epistemic Decolonization Online Series, LSE, UK.
2020 Moral Encroachment and the Value of Irrationality. Philosophy Seminar. University of Cape Town.