Decolonised State-of-The-Art Review: A Tool for Highlighting the African Experience in Global Social Science Research

Abstract

Over the past decade there has been a significant number of State-of-the-Art review (SotA) journal articles published on various academic platforms, covering a myriad of topics. SotA reviews are up-to-date, in-depth evaluations of research that endeavour to summarise and critically analyse contemporary knowledge on a specific topic. Unfortunately, despite their prolific use in academia, researchers have noted an ad hoc approach to the SotA review process, as well as the need to address the lack of a rigorously documented process involved. This paper reviews the applicability of SotA reviews, when utilised in conjunction with participatory research, for a robust, decolonial understanding of women’s roles in peace processes as peace makers and mediators in Africa. In addition, we highlight and explicate our six-step process to remedy the overestimated and extemporised SotA review process, by providing an overview of our step by step approach that outlines, assesses, and substantiates the methodology of SotA reviews in the decolonial project. Recent progressive recommendations by academics utilising SotA reviews resonate with decolonising approaches to research, where focusing on social, temporal and contextual circumstances and questioning current conventions, lead ethics as to how the research is considered and conducted. As such, they offer researchers in the global South the opportunity to advance knowledge and provide value to diverse research communities and practices.

Introduction

As academics and researchers we live in a time of rapid scientific publication, with the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic only further emphasising the importance of up to date and reliable information to guide practice and policy (Abedi Dunia et al., 2023; Khatter et al., 2021). Therefore, there is a need for quality literature reviews that have both depth and rigor (Palmatier et al., 2018 as cited in Snyder, 2019), which are useful to researchers in presenting data and insights, and that offer a purpose beyond a recitation of previous research (Snyder, 2019). State-of-the-Art(SotA) reviews fulfil the function of assessing the collective knowledge in a field by synthesising research findings and identifying areas for future research, as well as informing policy and practice (Snyder, 2023). Over the past decade there has been a significant number of SotA journal articles published on various academic platforms, covering a myriad of topics. From studies on internet technology communication and data exchanges (Suresh et al., 2014), to landscape geography (Arts et al., 2017), indigenous peoples experiences of environmental pollution (Fernández-Llamazares et al., 2020), and sustainable digital transformation of higher education (Trevisan et al., 2024), researchers from various of fields of expertise are utilising this form of literature review to integrate large amounts of information and data into their work (Barry et al., 2022a).

Typically, SotA reviews offer modern knowledge synthesis for a specific phenomenon (Barry et al., 2022b), while addressing current issues of scientific concern that attend to research questions which are broader than most other literature review approaches (Grant & Booth, 2009). They are up-to-date, in-depth evaluations of research that endeavour to summarise and critically analyse contemporary knowledge on a specific topic (Church, 2017; Snyder, 2019). As an important tool of research, SotA reviews are often in a narrative format (some with tabular accompaniments) that summarise current developments in the field and identify new research opportunities to develop deeper understandings on a topic (Barry et al., 2022a; Grant & Booth, 2009; Snyder, 2023). They are also critical in highlighting gaps in current research and suggesting directions for future assessment (Barry et al., 2022b).

Unfortunately, despite their prolific use in academia, SotA reviews have no formal quality assessment and their “paradigmatic roots, methods, and markers of rigor are only vaguely understood” (Barry et al., 2022a, p. 281). Researchers have noted this ad hoc approach to the SotA review process (MacAdden, 2018; Snyder, 2023), as well as the need to address the lack of a rigorously documented process involved (Church & Kordoni, 2022). Additionally, the occurrence of ‘SotA chasing’ has been raised and used to ascribe the popularity of papers chasing SotA numbers with regard to the large number of literature sources reviewed, but with little concern for the relevance and value added from these sources (Church & Kordoni, 2022). This is coupled with the ‘reject-if-not-SotA’ phenomena where editors and reviewers are perceived to prefer SotA reviews due to overestimations of the generalisability and efficiency of these papers (Rogers, 2020). As the speed at which research is produced is accelerating, in a highly competitive environment like academic publishing where the aphorism ‘publish or perish’ is commonly used, SotA ideals of ‘bigger is better’ can only further contribute to the ad hoc processes employed thus far.

As a result, scholars have recently attempted to remedy the overestimated and extemporised SotA review process, by providing overviews and step by step approaches that outline, assess, and substantiate the methodology of SotA reviews. For example, Barry et al. (2022c) have created a six step methodological guide for a SotA approach to knowledge synthesis that includes traditional research activities such as research question development, time frame determination and data analysis. They also include as the final step researcher reflexivity, which acknowledges ethical accountability and transparency in sharing with the reader “perspectives that informed the interpretation offered by the research team.” (Barry et al., 2022b, p. 665). Similarly, Church and Kordoni (2022) emphasise the importance of inclusive interdisciplinary perspectives in SotA reviews over competition, in order to improve diverse views of rigor and acknowledgement of peers in other fields through proper citation to facilitate replication. As such, SotA reviews may offer researchers in the global South so called “credibility” when publishing their often disregarded research results, to advance knowledge and provide value to local, diverse research communities and practices (Snyder, 2023).

These progressive recommendations resonate with decolonising approaches to research, where focusing on social, temporal and contextual circumstances and questioning current conventions, lead ethics as to how the research is considered and conducted (Lipscombe et al., 2021). Denscombe (2024) states that true decolonial research calls for the democratisation of the research process and the utilisation of methods that enable authentic understandings as experienced by the communities involved. Similarly, as an interdisciplinary group of researchers in the social sciences, we interrogated how our SotA could include a co-learning research agenda with community members, in this case African women mediators, by incorporating their local knowledge and experiences into our review to “more effectively address local needs and priorities, thus resolving power dynamics in some ways” (Marovah & Mutanga, 2023, p. 12).

To this end, our paper proposes a novel take on the aforementioned model of SotA review for use in decolonial research approaches. To explicate this process, we first provide context of the research study in question. This is followed by a an outline of how our interdisciplinary research team followed the methodological guidelines suggested by Barry et al. (2022b) to conduct research with a robust, decolonial understanding of women’s roles in peace processes as peace makers and mediators in Africa. Lastly, we reflect on the success of this model, the challenges we encountered during the process, and the way forward for future use in decolonising approaches for research that advances knowledge generation and provides value to diverse research communities and practices.

Methodology of a Decolonial SotA Review

Our research project aimed to provide a holistic understanding of women mediators in Africa through two data sets. The first was a SotA review of the literature regarding women mediators in Africa. The second, involved a series of in-depth narrative interviews with women mediators from Africa that recognised indigenous knowledge, norms, and values as a valuable opportunity for inclusivity of women and their experiences. Both forms of data collection were rooted in global South perspectives through the use of decolonial feminist theory. This assisted the research project objective of developing local understandings of women mediators in Africa and their role in peacebuilding, while being cognisant of the system that privileges western values, norms, and knowledge over indigenous norms. The project addressed the gap in the literature on written theorisations of African women mediators involvement, to firsthand accounts of their practise and its relevance to the everyday realities of local communities (Hendricks, 2015).

The dearth of research on the topic of women mediators in Africa and the interdisciplinary, collaborative nature of the research, meant that this project was the first of its kind and exploratory. As such, it was flexible and adaptable throughout the research process and in the field, aided by gathering preliminary information during data collection from the SotA review and then refined by community knowledge and involvement, which was provided through the participation of African women as mediators in the research processes. Ethical clearance for the project was obtained from the research ethics committee of our institution after thorough review of its adherence to ethical standards and evaluating potential risks and benefits, considering the study design, data protection procedures and overall impact.

The SotA review required extensive database and manual searches to identify the literature on how the participation of women in mediation processes in Africa is understood. There were two rounds of data collection for this SotA review. During the initial round of data collection, we followed the traditional SotA approach where extensive assessments were conducted on databases, timelines, search criteria, and literature types. This process was followed by selecting a data collection tool to capture the most pertinent articles for the review. Web scraping was initially considered the most time-efficient tool in that it allows a user to collect textual data from digital sources without combing through each page manually and then exporting the data into a preferred format, such as an Excel sheet, by selecting specific information that the tool needs to scrape. The browser extension software Data Miner was chosen to extract articles from open-access databases detached from specific publishers and without profit orientation. As a result, the legality and ethics of web scraping had to be considered.

Currently, there is no specific law on data scraping, and while legal frameworks make some provisions relating to data scraping and terms of service, the legality of using web scraping as a research tool is even more complex (Paige, 2024). While there has been a rise in using automatic data collection tools, the legal frameworks have been slow to develop and often leave users with some confusion on the legality of using such data collection tools, especially for the purpose of academic research (Logos et al., 2023; Mustapha et al., 2024). Respect for the terms of service of a website or database, refraining from collecting personal data, and the judicious limitation of website requests to prevent server overload are critical considerations. The legality of using this data collection method is contingent upon ethical comportment, the nature of accessed content, its application, and the terms of service of the respective websites. The terms of service for data mining underscore the responsibility inherent in its usage. Nevertheless, the terms of service for ProQuest and Google Scholar introduce a layer of complexity to web scraping. While Google’s terms are somewhat ambiguous, stipulating potential access termination due to actions causing harm or liability, including unauthorized content scraping, ProQuest explicitly prohibits data mining based on institutional regulations. However, this information is not prominently featured on the website’s terms of use page.

Another criterion in selecting databases was the presence of an “advanced search” function to alleviate any inherent biases potentially. For the initial testing, Google Scholar and ProQuest were chosen to test the usefulness of this tool. These platforms required specific search strings, and a broader search using the keywords “women and mediation in Africa” could only be used for Google Scholar due to variations in layout and information on each results page. 213,000 results were found during the testing phase of the scraping, resulting in 1,531 potentially relevant academic journal articles. After a thorough review and excluding certain types of content like book chapters, dissertations, theses and briefs, the selection was narrowed down to 173 articles for further analysis and coding. However, the utilisation of the web scraping tool as a collection method proved to be labour-intensive in that the review of large volumes of articles indicated that the results did not yield the expected volume of relevant articles for the SotA review. Indeed, only 9% of articles scraped were relevant to the review. The lower-than-expected volume of results from the automated data collection tool and the lack of clarity in the laws regulating this practice and the terms of service of certain databases necessitated a second round of data collection.

The second, more targeted, phase of collecting information for the SotA was able to produce a more focused collection of articles that still represented the literature on African women mediators as a whole. This pivot had been informed by deep reflection on the part of the multidisciplinary team of researchers as to our project aims and objectives, whilst taking into consideration the feedback that we received from our in-depth interviews with African women mediators. This researcher reflection and participant feedback provided depth, authenticity, and insight into the context of African women mediators lived experiences and proved vital for drawing meaningful, grounded conclusions from the previous SotA process. Whereas the previous data scraping phase was more quantitative in nature, this phase was more qualitative. We decided to include a broader cohort of academic literature such a book chapters, as well as non-academic or grey literature such as policy briefs, reports and working papers. Furthermore, the emphasis of the process shifted away from coding as many articles as possible to coding fundamental works that reveal the general development and current state of the literature and how African women in mediation were being discussed.

During this stage, five databases were chosen (Google Scholar, ProQuest, SCOPUS, Sabinet, and EBSCOhost) to conduct the search on. Each platform had two slightly different search strings that were formulated as String 1: [gender target] AND [field target] AND [Geographical target] and String 2: [combined gender and field target] AND [geographical target]. The strings were slightly modified (e.g. presence of quotation marks or brackets) based on the individual search function of each database , for example ((women OR woman OR female OR females) AND (“conflict mediation” OR “conflict resolution” OR peacebuilding OR peacekeeping) AND (Africa OR African)). The decision to use two slightly different strings was made in order to maximise the chances of finding relevant information.

Database	Search string
Google scholar	(“Women” OR “woman” OR “female” OR “females” OR “gender”) AND (“conflict mediation” OR “conflict resolution” OR “peacemaking” OR “peace making” OR “gender roles” OR “gender mainstreaming” OR women’s participation) AND (“Africa” OR “African” OR “African countries”)
	(“Women in conflict mediation” OR “women and conflict mediation” OR “women’s participation in conflict mediation” OR “gender in conflict mediation” OR “gender and conflict mediation” OR “gender roles in conflict mediation) AND Africa
ProQuest1	((Women OR woman OR female OR females OR gender) AND (“conflict mediation” OR conflict resolution” OR peacemaking OR “peace making” OR “gender roles” OR “gender mainstreaming” OR “women’s participation”)) AND (Africa OR African OR “African countries”)
	(“Women in conflict mediation” OR “women and conflict mediation” OR “women’s role in conflict mediation” OR “women’s participation in conflict mediation” OR “gender and conflict mediation” OR “gender roles in conflict mediation) AND (Africa OR African OR “African countries”)
SCOPUS	“Women” OR “woman” OR “female” OR “females” OR “gender” AND “conflict mediation” OR “conflict resolution” OR “peacemaking” OR “peace making” OR “peacebuilding” OR “gender roles” OR “gender mainstreaming” OR “women’s participation” AND “Africa” OR “African” OR “African countries”
	“Women in conflict mediation” OR “women and conflict mediation” OR “women’s role in conflict mediation” OR “women’s participation in conflict mediation” OR “gender and conflict mediation” OR “gender roles in conflict mediation” AND “Africa” OR “African” OR “African countries
Sabinet	((“Women” OR “woman” OR “female” OR “females” OR “gender”) AND (“conflict mediation” OR “conflict resolution” OR “peacebuilding” OR “peacemaking” OR “peace making” OR “gender roles” OR “gender mainstreaming” OR “women’s participation”) AND (“Africa” OR “African” OR “African countries”))
	(“Women in conflict mediation” OR “women and conflict mediation” OR “women’s role in conflict mediation” OR “women’s participation in conflict mediation” OR “gender and conflict mediation” OR “gender roles in conflict mediation”) AND (Africa OR African OR “African countries”)
EBSCOhost	(Women OR woman OR female OR females OR gender) AND (“conflict mediation” OR “conflict resolution” OR peacemaking OR “peace making” OR “gender roles” OR “gender mainstreaming” OR women’s participation) AND (Africa OR African OR “African countries”)
	(“Women in conflict mediation” OR “women and conflict mediation” OR “women’s role in conflict mediation” OR “women’s participation in conflict mediation” OR “gender and conflict mediation” OR “gender roles in conflict mediation”) AND (“Africa” OR “African” OR “African countries”

Researchers were assigned databases where they applied the strings and went through the resulting articles to find appropriate literature to include in the study. Once an article was chosen, researchers cross-referenced with the existing collection of articles that were collected in the first phase to ensure that we were not duplicating articles. This resulted in 385 documents, of which 70 were dismissed as the full-text versions were not available. We also removed any remaining duplicates and individually vetted the resulting titles and abstracts for key inclusion criteria which stipulated that the document had to deal with peacebuilding and peacemaking activities, including mediation, by women who were African. This resulted in a final selection sample of 23 relevant articles that were thematically analysed by the authors.

Analysis was a labour intensive, deeply reflexive process that involved critical discussions on privilege and knowledge, to ensure that we were not re-enacting colonial dynamics in the field of global higher education (Le Bourdon, 2022). We decided to forgo our previous singular focus on ‘seminal’ works, as dictated to us by coloniality within the academic sphere, in favour of co-creating knowledge that recognises the “intricate interplay between language, scholarship, and the construction of African narratives” (Amuzu, 2024). As a result, our SotA review provided a broad overview of key theories, literature and policies from the past 5-10 years, as well as foundational works from earlier periods that provided important context for African ways of mediation and women’s involvement in these peace processes.

Discussion

After the failed first attempt at a traditional, quantitative SotA using web scraping as a research tool, the team realised that by utilising the so called more effect automatic data collection tools, we had effectively applied a reductivist approach to our research. The body of research available on African women mediators was already very limited, and we were essentially restricting ourselves further in attempting to replicate a quantitative paradigm. Once we decided to consider the premise that literature is open for interpretation and that multiple understandings of a phenomenon are available, it became clear that the issues we had encountered in our first SotA review resulted from a lack of comprehension that the knowledge generated through the review was value-dependent and informed by the point in time when it was conducted (Barry et al., 2022b). What was needed was a SotA review that combined both the local knowledge shared with us by the African women mediators we had interviewed, and our Western research paradigms to create a multiparadigmatic space of coproduced knowledge. This concept has been elucidated upon by Held (2019) who states that decolonising research means than innovative and inclusive research paradigms must be developed conjointly between Western and local researchers, using both knowledge sets to create a new research framework altogether. This aligned well with the orienting assumptions of SotA reviews by Barry et al. that there is no single objectively true or correct synthesis of a body of literature (2022b) and this need to embrace subjectivism begins with harnessing the perspectives of an interdisciplinary team to generate rich interpretations of the literature (2022c). In order to accomplish this, we followed the 6-stage process outlined by Barry et al. (2022a) for conducting a SotA literature review.

The process started with building a diverse, interdisciplinary research team of social scientists, mediators and graduate students, that embraced tenets of communitarianism to emphasise social responsibility and engage in substantive moral dialogues (Etzioni, 2014). The team comprised of academics from the fields of psychology and political science. There were twelve members in total and all were African, stemming from countries across the continent, including South Africa, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and Nigeria. Six members of the team had completed doctorates in their chosen field, while two had experience in the mediation process, and the remainder where postgraduate students. We varied in gender (ten women and two men), age (from between 21 to 42 years of age), race (five white and seven Black) and ethnicity. We were cognisant that while we were all academics, there were those of us who come from marginalised contexts, locations, and identities, while others had backgrounds of privilege in relation to the preference of academia regarding their native language (English), race (white) and gender (male). Our positionality was, of course, as diverse as each individual team member’s identity, worldview, and socio-political understandings of the world, which led to many robust discussions and disagreements at all stages of the research process. This is not unusual in decolonial research, with Naidu et al. (2024) noting that the positionality of each researcher, including their personal and philosophical perspectives or worldviews, will inevitably influence the assumptions, research design, and methods of their study. However, we were unanimously unified in our research aim to create a holistic view of women mediators in Africa, using a decolonial framework to acknowledge, reflect on, and constantly adjust our embodied presence (Naidu et al., 2024) as reflected in our research project. Highlighting the value of this interdependence early on in the research process (and after our failed first review) complimented our participatory research (PR) approach within the context of the qualitative in-depth semi structured interviews we were conducting with African women mediators.

By recognising the value of diverse perspectives and engaging in dialogue concerning our research experiences and our roles as insider researchers, the team were able to move through the first three steps of the SotA review and establish an initial research question of how the literature speaks about African women mediators roles in peace processes (Step 1), contextualise the research question within the historical development on the topic (Step 2), and then finalise these research questions to reflect the chosen timeframe and historical context (Step 3). As our research question sought to understand the overall development of literature on African women mediators, we decided not to limit our searches to any date and use a wider timeframe to identify key trends and historical context. The dearth of literature on the topic also meant that narrowing a timeframe could introduce bias by excluding important older studies, potentially leading to an incomplete understanding of literature on African women mediators. As such, we settled on a broad research question: “How is the participation of African women in mediation understood in theory and the literature?”

Next, we developed a search strategy to identify the literature that was to be included in our SotA review (Step 4), “an iterative process of testing and revising the search strategy to enable the researcher(s) to capture the breadth of literature required to meet the SotA review purposes” (Barry et al., 2022a, p. 285). We consulted with a librarian from our institution to assist, and, with the experiences we had garnered from our failed pilot SotA review and successful interviews with African women mediators, we recognised the need highlighted by decolonial scholars to critically examine and apply decolonising methodological practices to our SotA, in much the same way as we had to our interviews. We became unsettled in our research process, consciously taking part in reflexive engagement of our initial assumptions and interpretations (Thambinathan & Kinsella, 2021), to enable knowledge reciprocity with the women who were experts on the topic we were trying to investigate. These reflections and conversations facilitated a unique and transformative space where our academic researcher and African mediator knowledge systems intersected, facilitating a rich exchange of valuable insights which in turn fostered transformative dialogues and new ways of understanding (Datta & Starlight, 2024). As such, our search aim and indeed research objective aligned with SotA and decolonial principles which state that it is not the goal to review all pertinent seminal literature but instead, the goal is to be inclusive and through considered deliberation, include relevant literature to describe a historical evolution (Barry et al., 2022b) of the phenomenon of African women mediators building peace in Africa.

As mentioned in the earlier methodological section, our resulting final sample of articles were thematically analysed by the team (Strep 5), after being carefully organised and shared via the reference management tool Mendeley. This was an inductive process where we read and reflected on the articles to construct interpretations that generated an understanding of the topic, a history of its knowledge development and expounding suggestions for future research (Barry et al., 2022a). We met regularly to discuss our understandings of the literature in the final sample, in a manner of community deliberation with mutual respect to verify the thoroughness and strength of our interpretations. This resulted in the collective development of a detailed, 34 page code book outlining the agreed upon definitions and codes and definitions used to categorise and analyse data of our literature sample, essentially acting as a guide to ensure consistency throughout a study, which was especially important when working with multiple researchers analysing the same data. It included a list of codes, their definitions, examples of data that would be coded with each category, and instructions on how to apply the codes. The code book assisted to ensure transparency within the team by documenting the coding process and allowing others to understand how the data was analysed, clarifying and verifying the recurring themes and patterns the team identified within textual data. As explicated by Barry et al. (2022a and 2022b), the goal of this verification work is not to rigidly engage in a triangulation process to ensure objectivity but rather to helps the researcher team to ensure that the interpretations we made during our SotA review accurately represent the articles being synthesised.

This led to the final step, where the diversity of team of researchers and participants who were interviewed was acknowledged through reflexivity (Step 6) the last marker of rigor for SotA reviews. As already discussed, we were a multiracial and multicultural group of researchers. Although all the literature reviewed and group discussions conducted were in English, the diversity of the research team assisted each other to bridge cultural and linguistic gaps, facilitating communication, improving the accuracy of translations, and contributing to a more nuanced understanding of African women mediators (Marovah & Mutanga, 2023). The twelve African women mediators interviewed were from across the African continent, including Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Malawi and Nigeria. They were of various ages, racial, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds, as well as having various levels of experience in mediation. By considering their interview narratives of doing mediative work in Africa, actual lived experiences informed and contextualised our themes identified from the theory and literature analysed during the SotA review.

Moving beyond traditional research where participants are simply data subjects, our decolonial SotA approach incorporated and valued their perspectives and experiences. For example, from the literature in the SotA review we learnt that there are a large number of women mediator networks in Africa, indicating that many women must be acting as mediators of conflict on the continent. However, there was a gap in the literature regarding what conflicts these women are actually mediating. In speaking to African women mediators, we realised that women were mostly active in grassroots informal peace processes which are not recognised by Western tenets of mediation and so are often unreported. This narrative data enable us to further explicate the reason for the gap identified in the SotA review and highlight the important of consideration and recognition of informal, indigenous forms of mediation to bridge the gap between the contributions of women in peace processes at informal levels on the one hand and their effective participation and influence over formal processes of peacemaking on the other.

This knowledge, intersected with the collaborative SotA review process, altered and mutually informed one another to create new diverse perspectives and understandings of women’s theoretical and practical roles in peace processes as peace makers and mediators in Africa. In constantly questioning and reflecting throughout the process, we learnt to embrace the subjectivism that underlies the epistemology of SotA reviews and acknowledge the subjective interpretations of the data that was informed by the expertise, experiences, and social contexts of the research team and the narratives of participants. We believe that equitable collaboration is the key to transformative paradigms and the decolonisation project, as a mutual endeavour that accommodates more than one worldview to acknowledge the legitimacy of other previously marginalised knowledges (Held, 2019), such as those of African women mediators. In critically engaging with SotA methodological issues and decolonial research concerns, we have attempted through this research project, to indicate that failures can be just as productive as successes in doing and transforming qualitative social research.

Conclusion

As stated by Snyder (2019 and 2023) both conducting a literature review and evaluating its quality is a challenging research endeavour. It was the aim of this paper to transparently convey the pitfalls and highlights of conducting a SotA review that was informed by a decolonial feminist framework. The limitations we encountered are common to many literature review methods of survey when arguing the current state of knowledge for a specific phenomenon. These methods are time bound and subjective, which could distort the overall picture of development of a field (Grant & Booth, 2009), or, as in the case of our SotA review, the literature is simply underrepresented as little research of the field of conflict mediation has been mapped altogether. The overlooked and under researched topic of African women mediators efforts in peacebuilding indicate a dominance of global North, Eurocentric discourses that have, particularly in this SotA review, historically precluded inclusion, examination and acceptance of local African knowledge (Held, 2019).

Of course, as African scholars, we recognise the potential for bias based on the our interpretation of the literature, as is the limitation of an inherently subjective SotA review. Yet the dearth of research our SotA uncovered speaks volumes to the indifference in academia to include African or global South ways of knowing in research. That is why we have transparently shared our experiences of this qualitative method and suggested guidelines on how to conduct better, more inclusive SotA reviews, so that academics can identify actual research gaps instead of simply conducting the same research repeatedly, and increase the quality of diverse research. By emphasising communitarianism, respect, collective deliberation, and inclusivity, researchers can work towards addressing the power imbalances and methodological challenges often present in our work, and in so doing, contribute to a decolonised research process that values the knowledge, experiences, and perspectives of diverse communities (Marovah & Mutanga, 2023).