Decolonising the University: an impossible task?

Description

This seminar speaks to the relational challenges within the decolonial project and guides the audience through some ‘tricky’ questions not at all easy to answer about what it means, what it takes, and, most importantly, how we fail, to decolonise University. I will present a series of fictive vignettes based on my real-world experiences and pedagogical encounters as a Woman of Colour (WoC) member of teaching staff to bring to light some of the lesser-discussed, realistic challenges accompanying the decolonial project which has become increasingly normalised across UK universities. Situating these encounters within complex institutional psychodynamics, I contradict the linear continuum of a better educational future and invite attention, instead, on the affective and relational counter-resistances that ‘drag’ us, the university staff and students, the contemporary university and its academic citizens, back into the grip of a perpetual present characterised by relational failings, antagonisms, and crises. I propose that these relational failings may be reframed as ‘problem spaces’ requiring us to change not how we respond but how we question in pursuit of progressive actions in higher education.

Period	9 Mar 2023
Held at	School of Health in Social Science