Please join us for the first talk in the series by Dr Foluke Adebisi , University of Bristol, UK.

‘Rhodes must fall’ or ‘Rhodes must read Fanon?’ Thoughts on decolonising curricula in UK HE .

Decolonisation is often perceived as a means to uncover erased or hidden histories and ensure that our curricula are more inclusive or to improve the experience of students racialised Black or Brown or other. But one of the pitfalls of its praxis in UK higher education is a fundamental misconception of what it requires, both in theory and in practice. Decolonisation is often confused with any social justice endeavour. Nevertheless, decolonising the university should ensure that we, as an academic community, build the type of university that we want and the world needs. A decolonial university may help bring about new worlds of possibility. To be a decolonial university we must critically assess the impact of our curriculum – explicit, hidden, null – and our research on our students. This presentation will reflect on what decolonisation means and how we can implement it in truth in UK HE.

Biography

Dr Foluke Ifejola Adebisi is a Senior Lecturer at the Law School, University of Bristol whose scholarship focuses on decolonial thought in legal education. In 2017, she co-designed a Law and Race unit, which is one of the very few of its kind within the UK. In September 2019, she convened the first ‘Decolonisation and the Law’ conference at the University of Bristol. She is emerging as a thought leader on decolonisation in UK Higher Education. Her decolonial scholarship, which is pedagogical as well as jurisprudential, examines what happens at the intersection of legal education, law, society and a history of changing ideas of what it means to be human.

Dr Adebisi is particularly interested in academic concerns that arise from ensuring equality, inclusion and diversity within teaching practice in law and how these intersect with environmental degradation, massive global inequality and the potential for imagining an egalitarian future for humanity.

In recognition of her work, in October 2018, Dr Adebisi was included in the Bristol BAME Powerlist 2018 - A list of Bristol's 100 most inspiring people from BAME backgrounds. She is also the founder of Forever Africa Conference and Events (FACE), a Pan-African interdisciplinary conference hosted in Bristol. She blogs about her scholarship, pedagogy and interrelated ideas on her website ‘Foluke’s African Skies’ at https://FolukeAfrica.com

Programme

13:00 Welcome by Chair, Dr Andrea English

13:05 Talk by Dr Adebisi

13:45 Discussion

14:15 Close

About this series

This series is sponsored by The Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain; University of Edinburgh's Moray House School of Education and Sport, Race Equality Subgroup; and The Centre for Education on Racial Equality in Scotland.

The series will run from January – June 2021.

Other Talks in the Series:

4 March 2021 - Professor Buoventura de Sousa Santos, University of Coimbra, Portugal (Distinguished lecture)

22 April 2021 - Dr Dominic Griffiths, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

30 April 2021 - Rowena Anthea Azada-Palacios, Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines and University College London, UK (Special Talk for School Teachers on Decolonising the Curriculum in Schools)

13 May 2021 - Dr Jason Arday, Durham University, UK

3 June 2021 - Professor Farid Panjwani, Aga Khan University, Pakistan

10 June 2021 - Professor Penny Enslin, University of Glasgow, UK

Any questions about this event, please contact the series organiser:

Dr Andrea English , Andrea.English@ed.ac.uk