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About the Project
Exploring Coloniality and Precarity Engagements amongst Urban-Poor Resilient Malaysian Indian Women (EXCAPE URMI) is an international, transdisciplinary research project examining how poverty embedded in the historical creation of indentured labourers in Malaysia persists today.
Funded by the British Academy International Interdisciplinary grant, it brought together 74 people undertaking different roles to make the project a success. The project focused on understanding how urban-poor Malaysian-Indian women build community resilience, trace the legacies of colonialism—referred to as coloniality — in their everyday lives, and co-develop pathways for positive change.
This digital exhibition, Outside the Frame: Living with Coloniality and Precarity, brings together arts-based methods, photovoice projects, and storytelling to examine how colonial legacies continue to shape work, housing, gender roles, joy and everyday survival.
What is a transdisciplinary research project?
A transdisciplinary research project brings together researchers from different academic fields and non-academic partners—such as community members, practitioners, policymakers, or artists—to address complex problems.
Rather than simply combining disciplinary perspectives, transdisciplinary work moves beyond disciplinary boundaries. It co-creates new concepts, methods, and solutions that no single field could achieve alone.
Rather than simply combining disciplinary perspectives, transdisciplinary work moves beyond disciplinary boundaries. It co-creates new concepts, methods, and solutions that no single field could achieve alone.
Such projects are especially valuable for issues like coloniality and precarity, which cut across history, sociology, gender studies, economics, urban studies, and lived community knowledge. A transdisciplinary approach ensures that research is not only theoretically rigorous but also socially relevant and grounded in real-world experience.
The EXCAPE URMI project embodies this approach. The core research team developed working relationships with key stakeholders, including government bodies like the All Party Parliamentary Group for Sustainable Development Goals (APPGM-SDG), NGOs such as MyFamily and MySkill, and the National Union of Plantation Workers (NUPW).
With the support of these partnerships, the findings are intended to inform and redirect public policies concerning the urban poor, taking into account the uniquely precarious engagements of Malaysian Indian women.
The project also ensures that the needs of its primary stakeholders—urban-poor Malaysian Indian women —are assessed and met. By offering workshops dedicated to building skills that the women request for, the project focuses on supporting the positive change that the research collective wishes to see in their communities.
The project used a Decolonial Critical Participatory Action Research (DCPAR) process over a period of 16 months to build, support and work with a research collective of 47 Malaysian Indian women living in Kuala Lumpur and Penang.
What is Decolonial Critical Participatory Action Research (DCPAR)?
DCPAR is a research approach that challenges traditional hierarchies between “researchers” and “participants.” Instead of treating community members as subjects of study, DCPAR involves them as co-researchers throughout the entire process — from designing research questions, to collecting and analysing data, to sharing the findings.
At its core, DCPAR is about:
Shifting power by centring marginalised voices and knowledge
Disrupting coloniality when counter-balancing modernity with traditional practices
Addressing Precarity passed across generations, reinforced by systemic barriers
What does the name mean?
The acronym EXCAPE-URMI is a play of words in service of the transformative action we intend to facilitate through the project. Urmi is a common Indian name for women. Ur(u)mi is also a percussion instrument used in Tamil folk music.
Quarter 1: Preparation
Focused on recruitment, securing ethics approval, building NGO and community partnerships, and strengthening the Malaysian research team’s research capacity.
Quarter 2: Exploration
Conducted fieldwork with collectives in Kuala Lumpur and Penang using a workshop format and developed the concept of precarity with the collective.
Gathered written and verbal reflections: a diverse set of materials capturing the layered experiences of the collective.
Quarter 3: Analysis
Training materials and field data were synthesised to identify key trends, with preliminary findings shared at conferences.
Quarter 4: Dissemination
A preliminary research paper was drafted, gaps in literature were identified and feedback was acquired, and a creative team was recruited for the next phase.
Quarter 5: Creation
Created training workshops for the research collective and developed a dissemination plan, along with risk management measures, with the core creative team.
Quarter 6: Communication
The collective engaged in coloniality and ethics workshops, explored oral histories and storytelling, and co-designed communication strategies through the digital exhibition framework.
Quarter 7: Celebration
Revisions were made based on the collective’s feedback, and the digital exhibition was launched in Kuala Lumpur on the 6th of December 2025.
Quarter 8: Evaluation
Critical evaluation of training materials and data; dissemination of findings through conferences, exhibition mapping and video production; and the research collective’s review and feedback on data presentation via the website and exhibition.