As part of CRITIQUE | GENDER.ED | RACE.ED Roundtables on Decolonising the Academy

Disrupting Coloniality in the Classroom? Decolonisation, Feminism and Critical Pedagogies

Tuesday, 8^th March 16:00-17:30

Please join us for the second roundtable on decolonising the academy. Organised on the occasion of International Women’s Day, we invite our speakers to reflect on a series of questions pertaining to teaching, learning and the curriculum: What radical possibilities do feminist and de-colonial/postcolonial perspectives have to offer when it comes to disrupting coloniality in the classroom? In what ways can (and must) our pedagogical practice contribute to decolonising knowledge, in particular, knowledge around race, gender and sexuality? What are some of the common as well as unique affective and material challenges (and pitfalls) involved when attempting to heed the call of student-led movements to ‘decolonise the curriculum’ in universities with colonial histories and institutional whiteness? And how can those who are engaged actively in decolonising the curriculum resist exhaustion?

Speakers: Mukai Chigumba, Dr Sara De Jong, Aerin Lai and Dr rashné limki

Chair: Dr Radhika Govinda

Mukai Chigumba is a fourth-year law student originally from Zimbabwe. She is the current Women’s Officer at the Edinburgh University Students’ Association. Mukai is also a founder and the finance director of the Black Ed Movement, an anti-racist organisation created to promote anti-racism on campus. Mukai has a seat on the Law School’s Decolonising the Curriculum Group, and spent a year in the University’s Anti-Racist Subgroup.

Dr. Sara de Jong is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Politics at the University of York (UK) whose interests include (post)colonialism, race and racism, feminist politics, and the politics of NGOs and civil society, in particular in the fields of migration and gender. She has published the monograph ‘Complicit Sisters: Gender and Women’s Issues across North-South Divides’ (Oxford University Press, 2017) and co-edited the book ‘Decolonization and Feminisms in Global Teaching and Learning’ (Routledge 2018) with Rosalba Icaza and Olivia Rutazibwa. Her research has also been published in Cultural Studies; Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies; Security Dialogue; International Feminist Journal of Politics; Ethnic and Racial Studies and Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power.

Aerin Lai is a PhD candidate at the Department of Sociology, at the University of Edinburgh. Her work focuses on masculinities and race, using a postcolonial intersectional approach. You can tweet her @dyspen.