One of the key themes that BILT is working on this year is decolonising the curriculum – seeking to research key issues, ignite debates, providing advice and support academics to decolonise their curriculum and challenge common misconceptions.
There are increasing calls amongst students and staff for curriculums to be interrogated and for an examination of what is being taught, what is included and what is absent. The higher education curriculum, and the narratives and discourses adopted in teaching it, needs to be critiqued through a decolonising lens. Doing so will ensure that higher education teaching and learning is inclusive, and it would allow us to understand society and our subjects in more depth.
As part of this theme, we will be running a Decolonising the Curriculum Interview Series with people throughout the University who are doing amazing work regarding decolonising the curriculum. It is really important that BILT can provide platforms for those with lived experiences and those who have done important research and work on decolonising, and challenging Western-centric epistemological dominance. The interview series seeks to recognise and celebrate the amazing work of so many at our University in challenging structural inequality and colonialised imaginations and realities within systems of knowledge.
Through interviewing those conducting work, research, projects, papers and policies around structural inequality and decolonising, this interview series will address questions such as:
- What is meant by decolonising the curriculum?
- Why is it important to decolonise the curriculum?
- What would be included in the decolonising process?
- How can academics and university staff be supported in the decolonising process?
This interview series hopes to draw attention to the need to examine biases and assumptions and consider multiple perspectives in order to challenge Eurocentric paradigms and ingrained structural inequalities within higher education.
Our first interview is out now , Decolonising the Curriculum Interview series – Lauren Hutfield
Rhona Wilkinson BILT Student Fellow 20/21 working on the projects – Creating online communities – Assessment and feedback – Students as researchers -Decolonisation.