As the rise of Global South accelerates and Western imperialism declines, it is imperative to shift the locus of knowledge production. This shift necessitates moving from a framework where resistance and decolonization are merely objects of inquiry to one where they are the central agents of knowledge and narrative production. This shift in framework necessarily encompasses a geographical dimension, as the limits of established knowledge industry hinders the decolonial and resisting voices outside the tolerable epistemological thresholds in the North. Scholars from the Global South are increasingly building networks and institutions independent of traditional academic spaces globally. This is a pivotal moment to reclaim the narrative, to theorize and articulate the rise of the Global South from the South. 

The center for Resistance, Sovereignty, and Development Studies (RSDS), strategically located at the University of Tehran in Iran, is an international interdisciplinary academic center which embodies the global transformative shift towards a polycentric world in the context of West Asia. The center aims to voice subjugated knowledge and critical perspectives by bringing together intellectuals from the Arab-Iranian region and the broader Global South to seed new intellectual debates, cultivate Indigenous knowledge production, and build connections with other Southern centers to promote a polycentric knowledge production network. The center’s mission is to mainstream intellectual perspectives of the South by building a network of scholars, students, thinkers, and organizers committed to situate and evaluate the Resistance Front in anti-systemic struggles and within the emergent polycentric global order.