Community Empowerment Through Ubuntu: embracing Scholar Activism for Decolonial Transformation inside and outside Academia


In this workshop, participants will delve into the concept of Ubuntu, an African philosophy emphasising interconnectedness and communal harmony, as a foundation for decolonial community empowerment.  Led by Black and Gold Education members Fez, Naomi and Alice through interactive discussions, sharing lived experiences, collaborative activities, and reflective exercises; participants will explore how embracing the concepts of Ubuntu can inspire collective action and social change within their communities inside and outside of academia. 


Participants will also examine the role of scholarly activism in challenging colonial structures and cultures of our institutional spaces and in fostering inclusive, equitable, fugitive and reparative spaces within and outside of academia. 

By the end of the workshop, attendees will gain practical tools and strategies for applying Ubuntu principles and scholar activism in their own contexts to bravely advance decolonial agendas and promote radical community empowerment.


Themes:


This event is hosted by Black and Gold Education:  A Critical Librarianship Educational platform dedicated to providing inclusive and accessible decolonial education to both academic and non-academic communities. BGE is an acronym for the platform's creator, Naomi who is a 

B- Black 

L- Librarian  

A -Addressing

C- Critical  

K- knowledge gaps 

A- aiming to start discussions &  

N- new ways of thinking , to help 

D - disadvantaged people  &

G- guiding anyone and everyone 

O- on how to 

L- learn and use

D- difficult critical theory to make more empowered, critical choices in life


Photographer: Nicholai Clarke (National Library of Jamaica), “Ubuntu,” National Library of Jamaica Digital Collection. Source: https://nljdigital.nlj.gov.jm/items/show/8211. 

Speaker bios:

Fezile Sibanda (She/her) is a Doctoral researcher in Education at the University of Sussex, UK and Editorial Associate and Community Contributor at the Critical Race Theory collective (CRTc). With a focus on race, coloniality and higher education, Fezile is particularly interested in how marginalised groups experience education. She holds an undergraduate degree in Education from the University of Brighton, and a MA in Social Justice and Education from the University College London UCL, Institute of Education. 

Currently, Fezile is working on her doctoral research aimed at examining the experiences of Black Brit-ish academics in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in England. The term Brit-ish is purposefully hyphenated to demonstrate the complexity of Black British identity. She uses storytelling as a form of intergenerational knowledge exchange and draws on the African (Bantu, Nguni) philosophy of Ubuntu as a research methodology. Her research aims to amplify the voices of Black Brit-ish people who are often marginalised in the academy. Fezile is also interested in counter-hegemonic world and knowledge-making, and draws on anti-colonial scholarship. She has written about race, gender, and intersectional environmentalism for academic articles, magazines, and blogs. 


Naomi L.A Smith (she/her) is a Critical Librarian recognised by International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), an emerging Race & Resistance decolonial Scholar, activist and influencer who also sits as an Editorial Associate and Community Contributor at the Critical Race Theory collective (CRTc).

As an individual focussed on creating new, practical and brave solutions to inequality, Naomi  recently co-founded the ‘Decolonize 9-5 network’ as a result of Academia and Libraries’ silence to the ongoing genocides in Congo, Sudan and Palestine.

She is also  passionate about making decolonial knowledge accessible, inclusive and fun for those outside of academia. Her methods for doing this include her  growing instagram page  Black and Gold Education (@blackandgoldeducation): an acronym for Black Skin Gold Hair Librarian, Addressing Critical Knowledge Gaps Aiming to start discussions and New ways of thinking to help Disadvantaged people and Guide anyone and everyone on how to learn and use difficult critical theory to make more empowered critical choices in life. Naomi uses this platform to build connections with an array of multifaceted individuals and organisations and has begun to develop and foster online and offline the global Critical Race awareness and discussion that is needed outside of academia and librarianship. Since March she co hosted and organised two successful decolonial community events aimed at Gen Zs,  centred on bell hooks and Audre Lorde called Communion: The Search for Human Love and Communion: Daring to be Powerful (and less afraid)

 In the words of bell hooks: “Not using conventional academic formats [or promoting the  traditional archetype of a librarian]  are political decisions motivated by the desire to be inclusive, to reach as many [people] as possible in many different locations”.


Dr Alice Corble (she/her) is a transdisciplinary scholar-activist-educator whose praxis is based on the role that libraries and archives play in past and present intersectional, infrastructural and epistemic justice struggles, with a focus on reparative praxis.  Sheis currently based at University of Sussex School of Global Studies and is a member of the Sussex Anti-Racism Working Group, and is undertaking a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship titled ‘Postcolonial library legacies and new transnational maps of learning’ (2023-2026). This project grew out of a need to understand what contemporary movements led by Sussex students and anti-racist groups to ‘Decolonise the University’ means in the context of an institution that was formed in 1961 at a significant global conjuncture postcolonial geopolitical change, involving transnational networks of nation-building, knowledge building, and social and epistemic justice struggles. Alice’s work examines the integral yet often marginalised roles of libraries and archives in these global social processes, using grounded ethnographic and archival methods to trace past and present connections between the University of Sussex and universities in the Caribbean and South Africa to co-produce maps of learning for reparative action. 

Alice is the co-founder and East Atlantic Lead for The Critical Race Theory Collective (CRTc) and has over 15 years professional experience in library, community and academic work in London and Brighton (UK), a journey which commenced with a traineeship in Radical Librarianship at the Feminist Library in 2010. More recently, Alice served as an Associate Lecturer at UCL Department of Information Studies where she brings a critical interdisciplinary approach to core postgraduate librarianship programmes. Alice is passionate about working creatively and collectively with diverse communities to articulate and enact intersectional and epistemic justice struggles for the human that foreground the voices of the Black global majority. In the inimitable words of Sylvia Wynter (interviewed by Bedour Alagraa in 2021):

“The only cure will be a transformation of the whole society, and an entirely new knowledge order altogether—otherwise we will remain trapped in this. It is through language that you and I are able to now sit and talk with each other, develop a mechanism to understand one another, do you see the immense potential there?! Language is entirely the point!”