Pathways to Prosperity: Canada

For over 10 years, Karun has worked and volunteered in social services in Nepal, the U.S. and Canada, particularly in community capacity building, community engagement, clinical counseling, and social welfare and social justice. He has worked with socially marginalized communities, immigrants and refugee populations. Karun is pursuing a PhD at Wilfrid Laurier University with research interests in globalization, transnationality and international social work. His doctoral research incorporates the global race for knowledge, skilled immigrants and their implication for contemporary western nation building.
In his article, “Walking the complexities between two worlds: A personal story of epistemological tensions in knowledge production” Karun tells autoethnographic stories of epistemological tensions emerging from his entanglement with indigenous and western ways of knowing in his journey towards doctoral research in social work. Linking tensions to broader sociopolitical and historical tensions that tie together the West and the Global South, Karun highlights the sharp contrasts and contradictions, as well as the nuanced contestations in the production of knowledge. He describes his experience of walking in two worlds and explores how he knows what he does, depicting his own Indigenous ways of knowing. Karun examines Western ways of knowing, depicting the subjugation of his Indigenous ways of knowing. Further, Karun addresses the hybrid ways of knowing that he embodies by walking in many worlds.