During the academic year 2023-24, the Teaching and Learning Enhancement Team at York St John University (YSJU) is hosting a six-part mini-series under the banner ‘Discussing Decolonisation’. The series aims to showcase and critically engage with the vital work that staff and students across the sector are undertaking to develop anti-racist and decolonial praxis in Higher Education (HE). Participants will be encouraged to reflect on their own positionality, practices and roles in relation to anti-racist and decolonial work, with individual/personal, institutional and broader structural lenses being considered.
Series organisers Dr Laura Key and Lucy Potter hope that these events will facilitate collective knowledge building and critical exploration of a range of differing perspectives, as well as functioning as a call to action to all those engaged in HE at YSJU and beyond.
The events include talks, workshops and discussions with some of the leading voices in anti-racist and decolonial scholarship and action today, and are designed to be participatory in nature. The audience will be invited and encouraged to take part in challenging activities and critical conversations, and to take away resources and actions to empower them to develop their own approaches to anti-racism and decolonisation in HE.
The first event will take place online on Monday 27th November, when we are delighted to welcome Dr Adam Elliott-Cooper (QMUL) and Dr Amit Singh (University of Manchester) to a Q&A discussion about the political potential of and problems with decolonisation as a concept within HE and broader contexts.
We will build on this discussion at our second event on Friday 15th December: an in-person workshop in York with Dr Alice Corble, Naomi Smith and Fezile Sibanda of the Critical Race Theory collective (CTRc), which will consider resistant knowledges, unmasking coloniality, anti-racist pedagogies and scholar activism within HE.
The third event will be a guest lecture on Tuesday 6th February, in York, where Dr Anna Bernard (KCL) will reflect on her experience of collective work on decolonising the curriculum at Kings College London, and discuss her recently published undergraduate textbook Decolonizing Literature (2023), which challenges readers to put the political work of literature front and centre.
All are welcome to attend, regardless of role (academic, professional partners, support staff, students) or institutional affiliation. You can find out more information about the first event and book your place by visiting the Eventbrite page.
To find out more about the philosophy and expectations that ground this mini-series, please read our Guidance for Participants and Speakers.