As artificial intelligence (AI)-driven technologies become increasingly embedded in higher education, concerns have emerged about their potential to reinforce colonial and neoliberal agendas—particularly in the global South. While AI offers possibilities for innovation, it also risks erasing the personal, embodied and socially situated dimensions of learning. This study explores how participatory methodologies can counterbalance such tendencies by rehumanising educational spaces and advancing epistemic justice. Focusing on photovoice—a visual, student-centred method—this research examines its application as a decolonial pedagogical strategy within a postgraduate psychology programme. Drawing on the group psychoanalytic concept of the social unconscious, the study investigates how photovoice enables students to engage with the affective, systemic and often unspoken dimensions of their educational experience. Students used photography and narrative to explore course content through the lens of their lived realities. Data sources included student and educator images, written reflections, small-group discussions and educator journals. Thematic analysis revealed that the approach deepened engagement, challenged normative assumptions around success and access and supported the co-construction of knowledge. Students reported a heightened sense of voice and agency, while the educator noted a shift towards more relational and responsive pedagogy. By integrating participatory visual methods within a technologically mediated learning environment, this study offers a meaningful response to the abstraction and depersonalisation often associated with AI. It contributes to AI-conscious, decolonial education by demonstrating how affective, relational and situated methodologies like photovoice can reimagine pedagogy and assessment in more inclusive and socially just ways.