Past injustices have afforded dominant societal groups to continuously accrue wealth and control systems of knowledge production, while preventing marginalized communities from breaking cycles of poverty, indebtedness, and social exclusion. The lack of historical perspective on global and local social, political, and economic inequalities has hindered critical discussions on the root causes of ongoing poverty, which disproportionately affects women and people from the Global South. Shifting the discourse on reparations and corrective measures for past inequalities would imply to shift the conversation towards the historical and systemic causes of economic and epistemic exclusion, as well as material and non-material ways to correct this injustice. In particular, I examine how the concentration of wealth and knowledge within specific societal and demographic groups has constrained our collective ability to develop just economic and epistemic systems. Within this framework, I also investigate how epistemic violence—through the suppression of Indigenous and non-Western knowledge systems—has shaped contemporary debates on psychedelic justice. I analyze how the historical marginalization and appropriation of traditional plant medicine practices intersect with broader structures of economic and social exclusion, and how reclaiming these knowledge systems can contribute to more equitable frameworks of healing and justice.
Dr. Emilia Roig is a bestselling author, political scientist and award-winning social justice leader. She founded the Center for Intersectional Justice (CIJ) in 2017 and has been dedicated to inspiring people to divest from systems of oppression and to shift collective consciousness ever since. She has taught at universities in France, Germany, and the U.S. on intersectionality theory, postcolonial studies, critical race theory, queer feminism, and international and European law, including DePaul University of Chicago and Columbia University. After earning a Master of Public Policy and an MBA in International Law, she completed her PhD in Political Science at Humboldt University in Berlin and Science Po in France. Prior to her PhD, she worked at the UN in Tanzania and Uganda, at the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) in Cambodia, and at Amnesty International in Germany, and decided to leave the field of international development to focus on social justice in Europe. She was a jury member of the German Nonfiction Prize in 2020, was appointed Ashoka Fellow in 2019, and received the Edition F Award in 2021. She was elected “Most Influential Woman of the Year” in the Impact of Diversity Award in 2022. In 2024 she joined the Käthe Hamburger Research Center on Apocalyptic and Post-apocalyptic Studies at the University of Heidelberg.
