On November 17th we held a Zoom webinar on the theme of ‘Where next with decolonising the curriculum? (original text is down this page, below this brief report). We did have some problems at the start and apologise to anyone who was unable to join us, and for the slightly delayed start. Various links were posted during the session and they can be found just below the embedded video.

Speakers

Stephen Hancock (North Carolina) joined a UCL panel to discuss (amongst other things) the topic of curriculum trauma. From UCL, we welcome:

• Jennifer Brown (Head of Library Services HR; see the team’s inclusion award acceptance video);
• Cathy Elliott (Associate Professor (Teaching) in The UCL Centre for the Pedagogy of Politics/Department of Political Science and lead for the UCL Inclusive Curriculum Project);
• Mike Sulu (Biochemical Engineering; co-chair of the Race Equality Steering Group);

Chair: Victoria Showunmi (IOE)

Links provided via the chat

• Rethinking Economics re diversifying, decolonising and democratising economics
• Next week, a Decolonising Learning Technology event
• Cathy’s paper, mentioned in her talk
• Anti-Racism in Higher Education: An Action Guide for Change: ready for pre-purchase
• Re the Q How can we come up with feasible, practical steps in declonolising the curriculum in individual departments? Are there any successful examples we can learn from? See https://blogs.soas.ac.uk/decolonisingsoas/learning-teaching/
• Library Liberating the Collections work at UCL in a recent news item (we are very keen to follow up on this with UCL colleagues)
• A practical example of decolonising – SOAS
• University of Brighton; working with students to decolonise the curriculum in all 8 Schools of the University through our Inclusive Practice Partnerships Scheme. Students are employed to work in partnership with staff (see also this public page).
• Students talking about our Brighton Scheme
• interesting article today about getting into Harvard
• Another good example of cross institutional activity is Leicester DMU
• London Met initiative

Original post and info before the talk

After an apparently quiet lockdown (actually, working behind the scenes but that’s another story), we wanted to identify areas to consider as a community that were not currently gaining focus. In the past few years, many initiatives have been taken up by various agents in UCL and Higher Education, but what should we focus on to ensure that momentum is not lost? To that end, we set up a webinar for November 17th, 1-2.30pm UK GMT.

Please register via the Eventbrite page to receive the Zoom webinar link a little before.

Where next with decolonising the curriculum?

Calls to decolonise the curriculum have been made from various quarters of Higher Education internationally, with extremely varied results and responses. Many feel that the initial impetus has become dispersed or rerouted. In addition, these calls often run into deliberate or systemic opposition because infrastructure, habits and resources are aligned to keep things the way they are are and always have been.

This discussion throws open the question of ‘where next?’ and draws on a range of speakers who have each grappled with the realities and implications of decolonising curricula, across a range of university activities.

Speakers

Stephen Hancock (North Carolina) will be joining a UCL panel to discuss (amongst other things) the topic of curriculum trauma.

From UCL, we welcome:

• Jennifer Brown (Head of Library Services HR; see the team’s inclusion award acceptance video);
• Cathy Elliott (Associate Professor (Teaching) in The UCL Centre for the Pedagogy of Politics/Department of Political Science and lead for the UCL Inclusive Curriculum Project);
• Mike Sulu (Biochemical Engineering; co-chair of the Race Equality Steering Group);
• Student sabbatical? (tbc).

Chair: Victoria Showunmi (IOE)

Format

Each speaker is invited to outline in 5 (maximum 10) minutes the area they have worked in, what challenges they face(d) and what they think is the priority as we continue this work. The chair will then present questions from the participants. We intend to discuss UCL but anchored very much in wider conversations and themes.

Recording

The session will be recorded with the intention of making it available later but speakers will be asked to confirm (or deny) they would like it to be made public beforehand.

When, where

This event will be held on Zoom, 1-2.30pm UK GMT, November 17th.

Participation

You will need to have a personal or institutional account with Zoom to attend. We expect to be using Zoom webinar format.