Below Dr Jodi Burkett, UoP senior lecturer in late twentieth-century history, imperial history and race, writes about a conference she attendance sharing ideas for decolonising the university curriculum.
Last week I had the opportunity to attend the Reimagining Higher Education: Journeys of decolonising conference held at the Institute of Education in London (thanks to SASSHPL for funds to support this!). I was attending with my colleague Bhavin Dedhia (Dentistry) to present some work that we have been doing with Lena Grinsted (Biology) to decolonise science teaching and promote inclusive teaching and learning spaces here at Portsmouth. This work is based on research that Lena undertook a few years ago which will be published shortly in Plos One.
While it was really helpful and interesting to present what we’ve been working on, listening to the keynotes and other speakers was perhaps even more useful. In reflecting on the day I think that there were three things in particular that stood out to me about the conference and the presentations that I saw.
First, there was a clear recognition that we need to pay more attention to the emotions involved in decolonising work. One of the first plenary sessions was from the team at De Montfort who have done extensive work on decolonising the university. They encouraged conference participants to reflect on the joy that came with doing decolonising work. This is very true – undertaking work to decolonise curricula has allowed me to work with colleagues that I might never have met which has been amazing. The work itself has also encouraged me to think about my research and my teaching in new and different ways and has been fulfilling work. That said, the reason we needed to be reminded to reflect on the joy is because the challenge and the emotional difficulty of doing this work are so apparent and ever-present, which I will expand upon a bit next.
The second thing that kept recurring throughout the day was the particular challenges that most people across the sector are experiencing. Decolonising work is challenging to do, not just because it requires a high level of self-reflection and commitment to change the way you think and do things. It is also challenging because there are many people who don’t think it is possible or worth doing (or who are adamantly opposed to it). One of the keynote speakers spoke about trying to do this work while politicians in his state actively sought to prevent him. Doing this work therefore becomes logistically and strategically difficult and takes an emotional toll that is often overlooked.
Finally, the importance of history for decolonising was mentioned repeatedly by a whole range of speakers. One of the most significant first steps in decolonising is to know about the context in which our societies, our assumptions, and our ways of knowing were created. And understanding context is what we, historians, do best! One of the main pillars of the work that I’ve been doing with Lena and Bhavin has been to highlight how important transdisciplinarity is to the project of decolonising. This is a collective endeavour that is best achieved in partnership. We all need to know and understand the context of the world we live in, but that doesn’t mean that everyone needs to be an historian. What it does mean, is that historians are crucial. Teaching students the skills of historians – to evaluate data, to understand various interpretations, and to know the historical context – is, itself, part of the decolonising project. This conference reinforced for me the importance of historians and historical knowledge and the importance of historians in sharing this knowledge and working with those outside of our disciplines and in the wider world.
