Date: Tuesday, 5 November 2024 | 5-6.30pm
Location: Fyvie Hall, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London, W1B 2HW
Please register by 4pm on 4 November 2024.
The university experience can differ greatly for both educators/academics and learners. Race is one of many influences that can impact on academic experience alongside other dimensions such as sexuality and gender, or class, disability and religion. The Equality and Human Rights Commission has flagged out that despite Universities’ extensive EDI strategies, BAME students and staff still experience multiple overt and covert racist behaviours on a regular basis (FACE Handbook, 2024).
A widespread pressure to decolonise the curriculum in UK Universities has materialised in the wake of such lack of enabling learning and research environments. The latter are in fact compounded by the inadequacy of the knowledge routinely created and taught to challenge racial categorisations. By allowing for knowledge systems alternative to those that enabled the experience of colonisation, Universities start to create inclusive environments not only for research and learning but also for the future of our society as a whole.
Our panel roundtable will host three speakers who will be talking about decolonisation of research and learning from multiple perspectives. Dr Sabine Franklin (Wellesley College, USA) will present a decolonial approach to research by exploring how, in the context of the 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak, the creation of aid intervention narratives and the interpretation of epidemiological data was radically influenced by the adoption of Western-centric policy approaches. Dr Amber Murrey (University of Oxford)’s talk will challenge some of the criticisms that have been moved to the decolonisation debate as it emerged in the Global North and beyond and will reinforce the need for engaging with such debate in a way that is fluid, shape-shifting and active. Finally, Dr Ricardo Twumasi (King’s College London) will explore the critical intersections of health inequalities, organisational change, and equality in the workplace. His talk will explore how dismantling traditional academic paradigms can pave the way to inclusive and equitable learning and to aligning more authentically with diverse global experiences.
The event will be moderated by Prof. Dibyesh Anand who is Deputy Vice–Chancellor (Global Engagement and Employability) at the University of Westminster. Dibyesh is also co-chair of both the University of Westminster’s Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Committee and its Black and Minority (BME) Committee. He is also the Chair of London Higher’s EDI Network and has been appointed to Research England’s EDI Expert Advisory Group (2023-2026).
westminsterdpn.com 