In Diversity, Inclusion, and Decolonization: Practical Tools for Improving Teaching, Research, and Scholarship, Abby Day, Lois Lee, Dave S.P. Thomas and James Spickard bring together academics from across the globe to explore tangible actions those wit…
Category: Decolonising the University
Moving beyond the talk: Universities must become anti-racist
In 2016, Dr Akile Ahmet wrote a piece for the LSE Impact Blog entitled ‘We need to speak about race’: Examining the barriers to full and equal participation in university life’. Nearly five years on, she reflects on the state of Black and minority ethnic representation and inclusion in Higher Education. She finds that whilst … Continued
On teaching anticolonial archives
What does exploring decolonisation mean, look like and feel like In the classroom? And how does one think of this in relation to both the curriculum and pedagogy? Sara Salem takes up these questions as she reflects on designing and delivering a course at LSE on anticolonial archives. She takes readers through the contents of … Continued
What we know about the academic journal landscape reflects global inequalities
Over the past sixty years, there has been an exponential growth in the global scholarly publishing landscape. Mapping or capturing it, however, is a difficult task as dominant databases only cover a small proportion of published journals. Kirsten Bell and David Mills offer their own cartographic visualisation of the global scholarly publishing landscape. They argue … Continued
COVID-19 Researcher Stories: Adapting Under Adversity in Nigeria
Lockdown has presented researchers across the world with a mix of opportunities- in the form of time and new forms of connection as well as challenges: working from home, the disruption to business as usual and health and economic concerns. In this post, we hear from four researchers in Nigeria on how they creatively responded … Continued
The COVID-19 crisis has confirmed that a strong knowledge system is key to a just, peaceful and sustainable world
COVID-19 has highlighted the need to work with researchers all around the world at the same time that it has also exposed the inequalities in the global research and knowledge system. In this piece, John Young from the International Network for Advancing Science and Policy (INASP) reflects on the importance of an equitable knowledge system as … Continued
How to research policing? Talk to people who have been arrested. 4 insights from 150 arrested individuals on the role and reform of the police.
Over past months, the Black Lives Matter movement’s denunciation of police violence has been spotlighted in the wake of high-profile police killings of Black men in the United States. Over the past five years, the cities of Cleveland and Baltimore entered “consent decrees” to undertake civil rights improvements in their police forces after Federal Government … Continued
Book Review: Decolonizing Ethnography: Undocumented Immigrants and New Directions in Social Science by Carolina Alonso Bejarano, Lucía López Juárez, Mirian A. Mijangos García and Daniel M. Goldstein
In Decolonizing Ethnography: Undocumented Immigrants and New Directions in Social Science, Carolina Alonso Bejarano, Lucía López Juárez, Mirian A. Mijangos García and Daniel M. Goldstein present collaborative research on the rights of undocumented migrants in New Jersey, USA, utilising an alternative approach to ethnography that seeks to position it as a powerful tool of self-empowerment, public advocacy and personal transformation. By reworking notions of … Continued
From management meetings to meaningful change: risks of institutional capture in the decolonisation of UK higher education and recommendations for delivering structural change
As there are growing calls from below, alongside expanding formal initiatives, to decolonise universities, Dr Rima Saini outlines what decolonisation means in the higher education context. She highlights that it is a radical project of institutional transformation that lies in exposing and upturning the colonial underpinnings of our universities. Given the immensity of this task, Saini … Continued