How can we work to decolonize the curriculum in a proud naval city so freighted with the history of imperial warfare?
Promoting equality, diversity and inclusivity in HE requires an institution to reflect with candour on its own history, political economy and current practices. Several famous museums, for example, including the Ashmolean, British Museum and Wellcome Collection, have made public statements that their collections were partly acquired through the exercise of often violent colonial power, declaring their willingness to resolve some of these previously glossed-over injustices.
This session will consider how we might begin to do similarly in Higher Education, specifically with regard to this university's position in a naval city with a long imperial past and militarized present. This awareness can be applied to learning practices, curriculum and course design, research ethics and institutional policy and governance.
Somewhat more radical than hegemonic discourses of diversity awareness training and ‘privatised multiculturalism’ (Paul Gilroy), our aim is to contribute to honest critical thinking, consistent moral reasoning and an analysis of racism and other social injustices on the institutional level rather than chiefly as a matter of individual responsibility.
This session aims to:
To teach and support student learning about the military-colonial past and its continuity with armed conflict in the present. (A2)
To equip both students and staff to think critically about the governance of their institution and how building meaningful democracy would improve progress in EDI (as argued by scholars such as Barnaby Raine) (A2)
Explore the use of appropriate learning technologies that will help to foment such critical thinking, such as digital archival investigation and group peer reviewing activities (K3)
To aid the professional development of students by teaching them about the realities of EDI in the heritage industry and academic sector (A5)
To engender inclusive practice by sharing the benefits of canvassing the views of BAME students about whether they feel the university and city more broadly are ‘safe spaces’ for them with regards to the political economy of both, and the latter’s colonial topography (streets named after colonial battles and so forth). (V3)
