Rethinking knowledge production in educational leadership research: Impossibility, hybridity and epistemic inheritance

Critiques of educational-leadership research have long highlighted the dominance of Global North theories and frameworks, prompting calls for greater geographical diversification and more equitable knowledge production, often treated as causally related. Such calls frequently assume an implicit binary between Global North and Global South knowledge, implying that epistemically distinct or purer forms of research-based knowledge production can be located in, or recovered from, particular contexts. This conceptual article interrogates that presumption. I argue that ‘pure’ Global South knowledge production in educational-leadership research is conceptually untenable under historically layered conditions of globalisation and coloniality and requires further theorisation. The article develops two typologies. The first identifies four interrelated forms of impossibility – epistemic, discursive, subjective and methodological – that delimit how research knowledge is produced and legitimated. The second conceptualises hybridity as a patterned feature of contemporary scholarship, distinguishing between assimilative, strategic, disavowed and reflexive modes. By shifting attention from geographical origin to epistemic condition, the article reframes debates on diversification and equity. It argues that the task is not the pursuit of epistemic purity, but reflexive research engagement with epistemic inheritance and hybridity as unavoidable, power-laden features of a globalised field.