METODOLOGIA UKUMELANA

UKUMELANA METHODOLOGY: EPISTEMIC INSURGENCY FROM A BLACK-CENTERED ETHNOGRAPHIC PERSPECTIVE Abstract: This article presents the Ukumelana Methodology, an Afro-diasporic approach to research grounded in Black-centered epistemologies, in dialogue with ethnographic foundations. Developed within the context of a master’s dissertation, the approach articulates body, memory, and territory as inseparable dimensions of knowledge production, challenging perspectives that fragment subject and object. Structured around three encounters/core groups, the methodology integrates listening, coexistence, and shared experience, recognizing communities and traditional knowledges as legitimate sites of epistemic production. Ukumelana analysis is interpretative and is organized through Seed-Categories and the Black-Epistemic Equivalence Framework (QENE), operating as a critical device for displacing Eurocentric concepts. Based on lived experiences in the Quilombola Community of Lagoa da Pedra, it is concluded that, by proposing a situated, relational, and counter-colonial investigative perspective, the approach expands the horizons of educational research by incorporating historical, cultural, and symbolic dimensions of Black and traditional peoples, contributing to the construction of a plural, critical education committed to epistemic diversity. Keywords: Afrocentricity; Counter-colonial ethnography; Black-centeredness; Afro-diasporic methodology.