The ‘Black Students, White Curriculum: Challenging the Eurocentrism of Academia’ event is now up and running. Links for the Eventbrite site to get the tickets for the event and also the Facebook Like page for Decolonising Sheffield are below. The event description is included as well as the sites. I will be eternally grateful if you could circulate this amongst your students and your staff and the wider community and interest groups.
“Decolonising Sheffield presents ‘Black Students, White Curriculum: Challenging The Eurocentrism of Academia’.
This event will critically analyse the contextual and historical framework to why curricula and syllabi are constructed along White/Eurocentric lines and it will also discuss ways in which this can be dismantled. By having this event, we do not merely ask: ‘Why is my curriculum white? – we want to reinforce the following: ‘Yes, my curriculum is white, because it is the product of Eurocentric empire’. We hope that this event will help set the foundations for the (re)formation of a curriculum that is not just ‘inclusive’ and ‘diverse’ – but one that better reflects the histories and realities of the world we live in, communicates the silenced voices and presents the hidden perspectives of the ‘Other’, and seeks to disestablish the (power) structures that oppress and disadvantage racialised minorities in academia.
The event will consist of a panel of academics and research students and a Q+A session. The recommendations from both the panel and the audience will feed into the review on the curriculum that is taking place in certain departments at the University of Sheffield.
Date: Wednesday 9th December 2015
Location: Lecture Theatre 7, Hicks Building, University of Sheffield
Time: 5:00pm doors open. 5:30pm prompt start. Event finishes at 7:30pm
This event is open to everyone. Please reserve a place using Eventbrite or Facebook. The links are as follows:
Eventbrite: http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/decolonising-sheffield-8632920370?s=48163393
Facebook Event Page: https://www.facebook.com/events/1160823900612629
Facebook Like Page: https://www.facebook.com/decolonising.sheffield/
Speakers:
Remi Joseph-Salisbury – PhD student at the School of Sociology at University of Leeds researching the educational experiences of black/white mixed-race males in the UK and the US. Founder and Committee Member of the Critical Race and Ethnicities Network (CREN) which is a new interdepartmental, inderdisciplinary and cross-institutional network of postgraduate researchers based in the UK. Adopting a post-structural philosophy, which draws on the perspectives of post-colonialism, critical race theory, and feminism, this network aims to divert discussions of race and ethnicity in academia away from the theoretical, and towards a recognition of the particular role that ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ play in academics’ everyday research and practice.
Malia Bouattia – PhD student at the University of Birmingham researching Postcolonial Thought and Language. Her research interest encompass (but not limited to): postcolonialism especially within the Algerian scene, decoloniality, blackness, critical race theory, and the interplay of all these in language and thought. She is the National Union of Students (NUS) Black Students’ Officer since 2014, in which she represents 1 million Black students of African, Caribbean, Asian, and Arab descents in the UK. She is also the Founder and President of the Black Women’s Forum UK and ardent community activist, campaigner, and aspiring academic.
Maya Stainback – Research Assistant to Dr Paul Taylor, Associate Professor of Philosophy and African American Studies, Dean College of Arts and Science at Pennsylvania State University, US. A recent graduate in MA Race and Ethncities Studies from the University of Leeds, her MA research, which she will pursue further, looked at how anti-Blackness is to White Supremacy as Purple to Lavender: an analysis of anti-black racism experienced by Black Americans in contemporary society. Maya is an aspiring academic and renowed spoken word artist.
Dr Robbie Shilliam – Reader in International Relations at the Queen Mary, University of London. His research looks at three areas: investigating “Atlantic modernity”, mapping global interconnections between (post-)colonised subjects, and decolonising International Relations (IR) Theory. Robbie works with various Rastafari and Black community organisations in London and further afield.
Dr Deborah Gabriel – Lecturer in Politics, Media, and Marketing Communications at Bournemouth University. Her prior journalistic work focused on claiming representational spaces for people of colour in the news media by making them the central focus of journalistic narratives. Her research considers three areas: a) race and ethnicity in media communication, b) pedagogies of social justice and cultural democracy, and c) cultural democracy and race equality. She is the Founder and Chief Executive of Black British Academics, an independent organisation working to enhance race equality in the higher education sector.
Dr Jules Holroyd – Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Nottingham who will soon join the University of Sheffield in late autumn. Her research interests focus on topics in moral and political philosophy, moral psychology, and feminist philosophy. She has worked in the decolonisation movement in education especially within philosophy departments in higher education bodies.
Chair: Azeezat Johnson. PhD student at the School of Geography at the University of Sheffield researching the construction of Black British Muslim Women’s identities through clothing practices. Her research interest focus on: Black Feminist epistemology, critiquing Intersectionality, negotiating racialized bodies, the construction of Muslim identities, and clothing practices and the presentation of identities. She is also a Committee Member of the Critical Race and Ethnicities Network (CREN).