Anti-Racist Action Group

The Anti-Racist Action Group (formerly the BAME Staff Action Group) is led by teaching and non-teaching staff who work with OBU students on a wide range of activities, namely the publication of a BAME diversity newsletter, the organisation of public talks, the creation of further materials and resources for the pedagogic toolkit on this website.

Please contact the group coordinator Mariama Sheriff, if you would like to join/find out more about the group: msheriff@brookes.ac.uk.

Dr Sola Adesola is a Senior Lecturer and Researcher in the Oxford Brookes Business School. She specialises in International Organisations, Corporate & Business Law and International Markets & Competition. Her research focuses on energy policy, entrepreneurship and university-industry interactions. She is a prominent representative in the race and gender equality agenda at Brookes. Sola is a BME Diversifying Leadership champion and also serves as Athena SWAN Champion in the Oxford Brookes Business School, as well as being part of BAME staff action group promoting diversity in the curriculum. Sola co-organised an international conference on the New roles of universities 'COSINUS 2018 and has published her first book on energy in Africa.

https://www.brookes.ac.uk/business/research/events/cosinus/

Adesola, S; and Brennan, F (2018) 'Energy in Africa: Policy, Management and Sustainability. Palgrave. DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-91301-8

https://www.springer.com/gb/book/9783319913001#aboutBook

My interest in the action group and in diversifying - and decolonising - the curriculum emerges from, firstly, a general concern regarding persisting inequalities of race, class and gender affecting staff and students. There is an urgent need for our profession to be more aware of and able to share the various practices it is engaging in to remedy these issues. This follows from NUS and staff-led campaigns across UK HE institutions to acknowledge and act on staff gender pay gaps, BAME student attainment gaps, and the preponderance of Eurocentric 'white' curricula in terms of topics, authors read, and teaching staff. Secondly, more specifically, my interest is driven by an ongoing research project on observing, analysing and building a relationship with students' 'involvement in rewriting curricula and reworking pedagogic practice', looking at student occupations and other forms of resistance to neoliberal education. Part of this work has been inspired by PETAL projects for the Department of Social Sciences at Brookes in which we have been engaging with the student body on issues of BME inequalities and curricula reforms, through focus groups and organising a student-speaker event. My work with the action group therefore aims to represent the Department of Social Sciences in these endeavours to share good practices and learn from other initiatives across the university and beyond.

I am interested in looking at ways in which diversifying the curriculum can improve critical thinking in order to enable all students to engage more meaningfully with the Brookes Attributes.

My work with the BAME Staff Action Group largely involves coordinating the group's activities, as well as carrying out research on BAME subjects and figures in academia.

I am interested in diversifying the curriculum for two main reasons: one, because scholars in all areas but especially in social sciences and humanities are recognising that in the existing production of knowledge that is generally the basis of curriculum in most universities, including ours, there are clear Euro-centric and gender biases; and two, the world outside the universities which our students will engage with later is becoming increasingly diverse and plural and it is only a currriculum that recongises that diversity would prepare them adequately to deal with that world.

My work in the BAME staff action group will be primarily aimed at working collaboratively by learning from each other in the group to enrich diversity in curriculum in Oxford Brookes University teaching and research.

I consider the diversification of our University curriculum to be essential to modern education. We need to not only re-write the contents of some of our modules but also to promote new modules on controversial topics such as race and racism, thus allowing our students to engage directly and critically with interpretations and visions of history other than European and white master narratives. There is also a constant need to question these master narratives whose influence in contemporary politics should be underestimated.

For the BAME Staff Action Group, I am involved with the publication of UpStream! our newsletter, and with promoting our BAME agenda in the History Department.

Diversifying the Curriculum allows all students to see their perspective reflected within the curriculum. The diversity that we see and cherish can be part of what students read and practice taking into account the backgrounds and views on our ever global and diverse campuses.

I am interested in diversifying the curriculum because I believe that students need to have a wider perspective on the world and be exposed to views other than their own. Student engagement research shows that interaction with diverse peers and ideas at university brings with it a range of benefits for both the institution and the student.

My work in the group will be about persuading and supporting staff to look at their curriculum and to develop a more diverse approach to what they teach.