From Theorising Othering to Othering Theorising: Reflections from the GWO 2025 Keynote Panel

Over three decades of scholarship published in Gender, Work and Organization (GWO) and in other cognate outlets have meticulously exposed how organizational processes mark, marginalize, and exclude those deemed "Other." Yet, as the 2025 GWO keynote panel provocatively asked, what happens when we relocate the epistemic gaze and turn a critical lens on the theories themselves? This collective editorial, co‐authored by conference organizers and the members of the keynote panel, argues that the field must transition from theorizing othering to othering theorizing; that is, from analyzing marginalization out there to disrupting the Euro‐American conceptual architectures that enable global knowledge hierarchies in the first place. Drawing on the keynote discussion and individual reflexive vignettes from the panelists, we explore what it means to anchor theory in plural epistemic traditions and lived experiences from the Global South and other marginalized sites of knowledge production. We advance three interlinked claims. First, dominant theoretical constructs in the field are anchored in western colonial ontologies that translate poorly and misrecognize lifeworlds elsewhere. Second, a community‐centered research practice, grounded in localized ontologies and reflexive epistemic positionality, offers a route to epistemic justice. Third, the gatekeeping practices of journals, reviewers, and citation cultures reproduce coloniality in the evaluation of rigor and value. Through our collective reflections, we sketch methodological, editorial, and pedagogical interventions that may help cultivate pluriversal futures for GWO scholarship.